


The Tempest Inside

by withthebreezesblown



Series: The Tempest Inside [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, F/M, because who has time for emotional stability during a Blight, for those who don't--now with 100percent more context!, for those who like game dialogue--it's anal retentively transcribed when used, lore makes me happy, minor canon divergence towards the end--more in the how than the what, rating change because who doesn't like their Alistair served with a side of smut?, slooooow, smut not gratuitous porn?, somewhere in between a proper novelization and vignettes, swings wildly between sweet and dark, these kids are total dorks, this is my love letter to everything about Origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:26:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 86,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthebreezesblown/pseuds/withthebreezesblown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Circle of Magi was a shelter, a refuge. The Circle of Magi was a prison, a cage. Outside of it, nothing fails to amaze sweet, naive Solona Amell. Not the sun that warms her face or the sky that streaks red and gold as it sets. Not the wild apostate who’s never been sheltered <i>or</i> caged. Not the half-mad Chantry sister who thinks the Maker Himself speaks to her in visions and symbols. Especially not the almost-templar who’s nothing like a templar, with his wayward golden smiles. The world is bigger and more beautiful than Solona could ever have guessed. But no one ever warned her that beauty is something you can break yourself against.</p><p>Because there can never be too many retellings of Origins. Or too much Alistair. Unless you think there can? In which case, feel free to skip this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sun Came Dazzling

**Author's Note:**

> Random note that affects absolutely nothing: I imagine my Amell's first name being pronounced so-LAHN-uh, (and then, obviously, Lona like Lana). Feel free to consider that irrelevant and choose to go with whatever pronunciation you like.
> 
> Screencaps of my Solona and a playlist for this fic can now be found [here](https://withthebreezesblown.tumblr.com/post/142073807082/the-tempest-inside-has-200-kudos-squee-so-i-made), for those interested.
> 
> For those who like poetry--all chapter titles come from really lovely poems. You might have to use quotation marks when googling some, but they can all be found that way if that kind of thing sparks your enthusiasm.

Solona’s favorite thing so far is sunlight. Sure, there were a handful of windows in Kinloch Hold, but it was always considered suspect to loiter near one too long or too often. She didn’t know how the sun changes everything. In the early morning light, like now, everything is sharp and cold looking, silvery. Later, just before the light begins to die, everything will turn golden and honey and amber. At least it has every afternoon for the last week and a half, every day since she left the Circle. She hopes it will today too. It’s the loveliest thing she’s ever seen.

But then everything is lovely. The Ostagar ruins are lovely, the way walls that once stood tall now jut up jaggedly and fall away suddenly. Over there is a cliff, and it’s like the whole _world_ falls away, and there’s nothing but a silvery shimmer of fog. The Veil feels thin here; she can almost hear memories whispering to her even wide-awake like this. Even knowing that it has been a battleground for ages, that men have died here by the hundreds, can only add to the achingly sad beauty of the place. She wishes she could share this with her best friends, Neria and Jowan, but it has been a year since Neria did not pass her Harrowing, and Jowan—no, she will not think about that now. Instead, she thinks how this is the kind of place that inspires the epic songs that bards sing about heroes who are either long dead or never existed.

She has of course read about bards before. But she’d never heard one before she and Duncan stopped at that little inn on the way here. He’s so serious and reserved that it’s hard to tell, but she thinks he meant the inn as a treat for her. It was certainly a relief after a week on the road, sleeping on the ground and not bathing (not that she would dare to complain out loud—just look at everything she has gotten in return for giving up her bed in that cold, miserable hold—but it has never occurred to her before that living in her gilded cage actually afforded her luxuries that others do not have, never occurred to her that without those luxuries everyone, herself included, might smell like—she doesn't have the words, but, Maker, it's bad). But the bard’s music was unlike anything she’d ever heard. In the Circle there was only the Chant. She must have spent a thousand hours in the Circle’s Chantry over the years, and though a few verses of the Chant of Light have the power to make her heart swell fit to bursting, it has never truly been with piety. It’s just the sheer beauty of it. The way the notes line up, flutter and flow. She has always been a sucker for beauty. She had heard a templar say of music once that the last thing mages needed was another way to enchant the rest of humanity. At the time the comment had merely intrigued her, but now that she has heard music, she understands that it is a power unto itself, and she aches for it. She knows how to use creation magic in a dozen different ways, and there’s hardly an area of magical theory she hasn’t studied at least a little, but she knows nothing like the magic of music. She wants to be able to surround herself with it, to have music for every moment, to be able to make it herself so that she can summon it forth it whenever she wants it.

At Ostagar, she passes a group of soldiers sitting around a small fire, one strumming a lute, and though it is nothing like the bard at the inn, with her songs that plucked at strings deep inside Solona’s heart as surely as though it were the instrument being played, it delights her. It makes her want to giggle and skip. Their song is about wenches and pinches and good luck and a good… Well, Neria would have enjoyed that. She’d had a sort of collection of lewd songs once; Maker knows how she’d ever learned them, given that they were considered contraband, a negative influence on impressionable mages, and none of them knew anyone who didn’t live inside Kinloch Hold with them. Neria would have joined these strangers. She would have danced with them. A part of Solona aches to, but being surrounded by strangers is a bizarre and foreign experience, and just below her delight thrums a wild beat of terror. It keeps her from being swept away by the frivolity of the music. She keeps walking, eyes wide, amazed by everything. The volume of all these large, armored men. The smell. Well, no, that’s not exactly amazing.

And, look, there is a female soldier, and she’s so… lithe and muscular. She looks fast and strong, and she reminds Solona of Mr. Wiggum, the cat that used to live at the Tower (he was supposed to be a mouser, because mages aren’t allowed _pets_ ), at least when he was young and actually chased mice. By comparison, Solona thinks her own figure is more like Mr. Wiggum after he stopped chasing mice and started eating table scraps from the mages and sleeping a lot. She considers the woman a moment, then looks down at herself, crinkles her nose, and sighs. Too many lumps. Oh well.

It takes forever to find the Grey Warden Duncan told her to look for, partially because, even though she keeps meaning to be looking _for_ him, she’s mostly just been looking _at_ everything. Except for the Circle of Magi Encampment. No stopping and looking there. The templars outside make her nervous. They bring vividly to mind her last hours at the Circle, when, for the first time in her life, she found herself on the receiving end of a Holy Smite. In fact, there is nothing about her last days in the Circle that she has any desire to remember. She can’t entirely tamp down an irrational fear that this last week and a half, all of it, is part of an elaborate and most cruel punishment: that she’s been allowed to leave the Circle only to see everything she has been missing, and that after a sufficient immersion in the beauty, magnificence, and wonder of the outside world, she is going to be stuffed back inside the Tower and never let out again, now fully aware of all that she is being denied. So, lest she be snatched up and hauled back to Kinloch Hold, she hurries past as modestly and unassumingly as possible. It is the only time she has managed to keep her eyes downcast since she stepped off the damp wood of the ferry that carried her across Lake Calenhad and onto soft, dewy grass.

In the end, she finds the Grey Warden Alistair only because he is being yelled at very loudly by a very grumpy mage. She finds the way he’s antagonizing the man more amusing than offensive, but the round-bellied mage’s ire is escalating at a rate entirely disproportionate to the Warden's flippant mockery. The man actually yells at her to get out of his way when he stomps off! As if she’s somehow offended him too by merely lingering in the general direction in which he chose to stomp dramatically.

She isn’t entirely sure if the Warden actually dislikes mages or just this grumpy one, so she’s hesitant to approach him. It turns out, she doesn’t have to approach him, because he approaches her. As though it’s a statement that makes any sense, he says to her, “You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings everyone together.”

And he smiles at her. When he does it’s like he suddenly comes into focus, more clearly than anything around her. He is all gold and honey and amber, like late afternoon sunshine.

It has never occurred to her before, because she’s only ever come across one man before with all this golden glory, that she might have a type. Like the templar Cullen, this man makes her feel as though some vital organ has grown fluttering wings and is migrating around her abdomen. Like everything in the wide world outside the Circle, he makes what she left behind there look pale and lifeless by comparison. If she weren’t so distracted by this, perhaps she could have scraped together a better response than, “You are a very strange man,” said with round eyes, brows lifted. She gives herself a mental shake. After all, she has watched the sun burn red-gold as the day dies every afternoon since leaving the Circle. How can any man, however lovely, have any power over eyes that have seen such wonders as that?

“You’re not the first woman to tell me that.” His grin becomes a smirk, and the winged thing in her stomach multiplies. She wonders, just for an instant, if he’s flirting with her. Surely not. She’s wearing her Circle robes. And men who do things like join the Grey Wardens, which surely suggests some amount of faith in virtues like honor and duty, don’t flirt with mages.

Like a puppy chasing a passing bird, he is suddenly distracted by another thought. “Wait, we haven’t met, have we? I don’t suppose you happen to be another mage?”

She just stares at him for a moment—is he really serious?—before looking pointedly down at her robes and then back at him with a bemused grin. “Would that make your day worse?”

Point taken his abashed smile suggests. 

When they come to the point in the conversation where she thinks she’s supposed to introduce herself, she wonders for a moment if she’s supposed to bow. In the Circle, there’s never anyone new to meet, so she isn’t sure about the protocols of introductions. Uncertain, she settles for an awkward sort of half curtsy and manages a smile. “Pleased to meet you. My name is Solona.” It’s the first time she’s ever said these words out loud to anyone—the first time she’s ever needed to—and she thinks she’s done well. She wonders how weird he would think it is if he knew how pleased she is with herself right now.

“Right. Solona. That was the name.”

She likes the way he draws out the “I” sound in right. She likes the way he says her name.

When he tells her to lead on, she hesitates, twisting in a slow circle. She isn’t even sure which direction she came from, much less which they’re supposed to go. Life outside the Circle is so confusing. And lovely and glorious and wonderful. Finally she grins at him and shrugs “Sorry. Kinloch Hold actually is literally circular, you know. I’ve never had to give much thought to which direction I’m supposed to go before.”

He laughs. “Don’t worry; I’ve been here a week, and I can still barely find my way around. Duncan will be this way though…”

His talks with her as they walk, asking her about herself, telling her about himself, putting her at ease. Until the words, “ _training to be a templar,”_ come out of his mouth. She freezes in place, and he continues a few paces before realizing she isn’t following. It doesn’t matter that he’s trying to say that he isn’t actually a templar, that he didn’t complete his training. It doesn’t matter that there’s a note of distaste in his voice when he speaks about it. It doesn’t even matter that she’s never been particularly mistreated by a templar. In that moment all she can think of is the feeling of the Holy Smite ripping through her, choking her, breaking her into little pieces of herself.

It isn’t right to just spring something like that onto a mage. She’s never been so caught off guard by a templar before. They wear their gleaming armor and sometimes they hide in the shadows, hoping to catch a misbehaving mage unaware, but they never hide _what they are_. She can’t help a surge of the feeling of being betrayed or lied to, even though she knows it’s a bit irrational. When other than just now could he have mentioned this? _“Hi, I don’t know you, but I can see you’re a mage, so you should probably just be made aware that I was once partially trained to be a templar. Just so you know. Did you actually need to speak to me, or did you just happen to be passing in my general direction?”_

By the time he realizes she’s frozen with a bloodless expression of anxiety, she’s already trying to calm herself as he starts stuttering out an explanation. “No, it wasn’t—that’s not—I _never_ _wanted_ to be a templar! They don’t exactly _ask_ you what you want to do with your life when you’re _given_ to the Chantry. I have no problem with mages! I mean, you know, other than maybe that grumpy one. But that wasn’t my fault—“

She flutters a hand rapidly through the air to cut him off. “It’s fine. It’s nothing. It’s stupid of me. I’m sorry.”

He hesitates. “You’re scared of me.”

She manages a lopsided smile. “Yeah, well. Imagine that _I_ were head and shoulders taller than you, wearing armor that weighs more than you do like it was nothing, and had the ability to turn your sword into a skinned chicken. That doesn’t exactly inspire feelings of motherly comfort. It’s not fear… it’s good sense.”

When she finally falls back into step with him, as though to sooth her, he tells her how much he hated the Chantry, how hopelessly trapped he felt there until Duncan rescued him.

She thinks of how, when she wanted nothing more than to sink through the stone floor under the weight of Jowan’s betrayal, Duncan defended the intention behind her actions. How he was willing to stand up for her decency when she herself lost sight of it. “Tell me about Duncan.”

“Duncan is the leader of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden… which he would say doesn’t mean much, as there aren’t many of us here. Yet. Beyond that, he’s a good man. A good judge of character. I owe him a lot.” He looks at her appraisingly. “What about you? What do you think of him?”

“I owe him as well. He saved me.”

His smile is gentle and sweet, sympathetic. “That sounds familiar. He’s done the best he can with what little he has… and that includes me, I guess.”

His self-depreciating humor is amusing, but there is something in it that makes Solona think that, just a little, he means it. But she doesn’t know him well enough to tell him what his value is; she doesn’t know him well enough to know herself what his value is, so she only gives him a look of mock concern. “That’s not fair of you!” And then a bright smile. “You aren’t little at all. You’re really quite ridiculously tall!”


	2. But Joy's the Voice

Somehow the _idea_ that she is going to be sent out into the Wilds to collect darkspawn blood is nothing like the reality of it. It doesn’t occur to her until a whole pack of wolves has descended upon them that she is going to be expected to perform magic that is not a simple healing spell or enhancing aura. The first wolf comes out of nowhere and startles her when it lunges for Jory. She manages to throw a barrier spell up around all of her companions before the instinct that screams at her to clench down on her magic takes over. She’s scared. And when a good Circle mage is scared, the first thing she does is grab hold of her magic lest it get away from her and hurt someone.

When one of the pack slips past Alistair and heads straight for her, all she can do is squeeze down harder. She thinks she’s going to die when Alistair is suddenly there with his sword, and the wolf’s body is listing sideways after its head, rolling away across the grass.

He plants his body between her and the direction the wolves came from, breathing hard. A long moment passes before he decides there are no more wolves coming and rounds on her. “Generally speaking, when something is trying to kill you, you may want to consider trying to kill it first.”

Her answer comes in a small voice as her arms unwind from around her middle. “It’s just… I mean, I know how, I guess. I’ve just never actually cast a destructive spell.” Her voice gets even smaller. “Not on purpose anyway.”

He looks nonplussed. “You mean you didn’t practice anything but… what, barriers and healing spells in the Circle?”

“The… templars don’t keep tabs as close on mages who focus on creation magic.” She can’t help stuttering over the word “templar.” His eyes narrow when she does, and she can tell that he knows she’s thinking of him as a templar even though he says he isn’t anymore, and he doesn’t like it. “I’ve studied all the _theory_ though”

“Right… So what do you know how to  _theoretically_  do?” The way he draws out the “I” in right says enough about his opinion on that statement to make her cringe.

“Um… lots of things? Most of the primal tree. Especially ice and lightening. Those were… all of my first manifestations were ice and lightening.”

He actually shakes his head. “So your natural aptitudes are for ice and lightening, and you’ve never actually practiced either?” 

She’s had enough of his incredulity. Her frown sharpens into a look of irritation. “Well, how would _you_ like having _everything_ you do constantly scrutinized by someone? I mean, maybe _you_ like a bit of exhibitionism in your life, but that doesn’t happen to be _my_ particular kink, so I did what I could to be as obscure as possible.” With that, she stomps away from him.

They move silently through the scrub and trees for a while. She is pondering sending a lightening bolt at Alistair. It seems right now like a good starting place for casting the kind of spells she's going to have to. Just a small one. It might ruin his oh so perfectly tousled hair. He’d deserve that.

And then he’s pulling her roughly behind him, muttering, “Darkspawn,” in a low, tense voice.

Before, with the wolves, she was terrified. More at the idea of having to now let go and cast the very spells she’s been holding back with every fiber of her existence for as long as she can remember than of the actual wolves. But now she’s _angry_. The truth is, she isn’t really angry with Alistair. When she was in the Circle, she did not hate it. She had no idea what was truly at stake inside the Circle. She had no idea what sunlight and breezes and singing bards with lutes were like, so she did not know that she was missing them. Every single thing outside the Circle that she discovers is good or lovely or pleasing has been another piece of kindling, until there is a towering pyre inside her just waiting to be set ablaze. And here is all the spark she needs. She’s angry about the thirteen years she’s spent being denied _everything_. She’s angry about all the people still trapped in the Circle, still being denied. She’s angriest of all about Neria, who will _never_ appreciate any of these things she’s discovered.

When she spots the short, troll-like figure up ahead and Alistair whispers, “Genlock,” before Daveth can nock an arrow or Alistair or Jory can charge, she lets all her rage out in one fierce blast of frost, and the foul creature freezes solid and tips sideways.

It is not an incomparably spectacular bit of magic, but it prompts a battle between pride and shame. Pride because _she did it!_ The shame is automatic, a reflex. She doesn’t remember what her mother’s face looked like anymore, or almost anything about the place she lived until she was four, but she remembers why the templars came and took her away. _Shame_.

She was four years old. She had fallen and scraped her knee. She wanted her mother—that mysterious woman who she can’t even conjure an image of now. But she remembers wanting her then—and a thousand times after that too, long after her face had faded. Her nanny, a wretched woman bearing a striking resemblance to a dragon in her memory, wouldn’t let Solona go to her mother. It made her angry, because it _hurt_ , and she _needed_ her mother, and the awful woman _would not_ let her go to her—and then there was a feeling, a little like stepping out of a warm room and into a cold one, a tingling shift, but inside of her instead of out, and the cold rolled through her, an uncontrollable wave, and then there was screaming. First a shriek of pain, and then horrible, hateful screeching: “The wicked little thing is a _mage_!” And on and on. She remembers running to the stables, terror-stricken, hiding. Thinking she would be safe there. It was where she always hid from her nanny’s scathing reprimands. But later cold, gauntleted hands pulled her from her hiding place, and she could hear her mother’s voice screaming, “No! She’s lying! Not my baby! You can’t have her! She’s only a _child_!” That’s all she remembers of her mother. She thinks that if they’d just let her see her face one last time, maybe she would remember it now. But they did not, and she does not.

So there is shame. But Alistair is smiling warmly, all golden sunshine, and he’s pleased with her, and _she’s_ pleased with her. Mostly. But then there are more of the foul, short things, and tall ones Alistair calls hurlocks, and there’s no time for battling emotions, because she’s actually _battling_. She discovers that if she freezes them just before Alistair slams his sword into them, they _shatter_ , which is a neat trick, and soon they fall into a sort of rhythm. When he looks up at her with his smile like sunlight and says, “I think we work well together,” there’s no battle of emotions. It’s all pride.


	3. Bitterness Without a Name

The apostate’s clothing makes Solona blush. She doesn’t know much about the world outside the Circle, but she’s pretty sure that feathers and beads and scraps of leather do not constitute an acceptable outfit, even here. She wonders if Alistair is staring at the woman with the same half frightened, half lustful look appreciation with which Daveth, on her other side, is staring at the woman. It doesn’t surprise her after the comment Daveth made about watching her back. Alistair had frowned disapprovingly, looking as though he was about to speak, when she had smiled amicably at them both and responded, shrugging, “Or I could just kill you,” her hands making a motion to suggest the weighing of a scale. Though Alistair had tried to cover the sound, she was sure he had let out a snort of laughter.

She doesn’t know why it should matter if Alistair is staring at the woman’s nearly exposed breasts. It _doesn’t_ matter. Of course it doesn’t. He’s a templar. Or an ex-templar. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Does anyone really leave the Order? But still she avoids looking in his direction. They need these documents. And for some reason everyone around her is too stupid to get this done. Alistair, she hopes, is testing them, and that’s why he doesn’t take the situation in hand. She really hopes. Maker, men can be stupid. So she uses all her most polite smiles and her best manners. She stomps on Daveth’s foot hard when he begins to spew some nonsense about the woman being some legendary Witch of the Wilds. Idiot.

When the woman tells her that she likes her, there is an unexpected swell of pride. She’s never met an apostate before, and beyond that she’s never met anyone with such a confident lack of concern for what anyone else thinks. This is a woman who lives by no rules but her own, and Solona, coming from a life of nothing but rules made by others, can’t help admiring that.

The woman’s mother makes her anxious though. She can’t guess at the older woman’s motivations, even though her intuition usually speaks to her loudly and clearly about such things.

She is relieved when they find themselves back at the gates to the camp. The fact that she has to give the vial of darkspawn blood to Alistair to “be prepared for her Joining” sounds ominous, but she distracts herself from her fear by running back to the Kennel Master with the flower he asked for to cure a sick hound. As Duncan and Alistair make their preparations, she spends her last hours before she takes her Joining with the hound’s enormous head in her lap, staring up at her pitifully, as she whispers, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You and I, we’ll both be fine.”

 

 

The Joining sounds scary, but she wouldn’t have been willing to admit it before Daveth’s eyes roll back in his head and then cloud over as his body convulses and falls to the stone ground. She’s still hoping that maybe this is normal and he will get up when Duncan intones gravely, “I am so sorry, Daveth.”

And then there’s Jory. She can’t believe he could be such a fool as to believe his chances against Duncan’s daggers were better than his chances with that chalice of tainted blood. Alistair and Duncan act a little like there is something to be proud of in her taking the chalice and swallowing willingly after what she has just seen, but they’re wrong. There’s nothing to be proud of. She has spent nearly her whole life in the Circle, being a good mage, and this is just the kind of choiceless choice that that life prepared her for. At least she got to watch the world burn gold as the afternoon died one more time. One last time.

Just before she swallows, she wishes she had the opportunity to truly choose this. Because she’s seen what it is to live in the light now, and she wishes this step she’s taking to place herself between it and the darkness was her own election. She would like to think that this is a choice she would have made if she were free, but how can anyone who’s never had _any_ freedom know what they would do with it? She wants to be worthy of Duncan and Alistair’s pride. She wants to not die. The taste is even fouler than the idea of what it is prepares her for. Like ash and rot and death. She manages not to gag; she swallows.

And then there is abominable pain, as though ice and fire and electricity are all simultaneously coursing through her veins in some solid form too big for the narrow channels, which feel as though they are ripping and tearing as the taint moves through them. Her last thought as she collapses, spasming, is that she must look now exactly like Daveth did a moment ago, dying; she is dying.

 

 

She aches. Everywhere. She wonders if she has survived a possession. It certainly feels as though her skin has only just evicted an evil too big for it. And then coherent thought returns enough to remind her where she is and why she aches. When her eyes open, Alistair is hovering over her. She doesn’t realize how cold she is until his warm hands wrap around her arms, helping her up. She wants to tuck herself under his arm and steal his heat, but really she doesn’t know him at all, and that is entirely inappropriate. Honestly, she was raised in the Circle, not a zoo, and for all that the outside world feels a little like a foreign country with strange customs, it isn’t as though she’s lost _all_ of her decorum. So she steps back, straightens her spine, and lifts her chin in the air. When Duncan asks how she is, she says simply, “It’s over. I’m fine.”

She must be making a good show of being fine because, after handing her her new Warden armor—all gleaming silver, thick, tough blue fabric, and warm brown leather—Duncan says to her, “Take some time. When you are ready, I’d like you to accompany me to a meeting with the king.”

As though all she needs is a few minutes alone for some deep breathing, and she’ll be right as rain. She read that expression in a book once. She has never seen rain. But nothing has been right since Jowan asked her to help him destroy his phylactery. Her head falls back, and when her eyes open, her heart seizes with wonder. In the clear night sky there are stars without number. She has seen them every night, has slept beneath them, but like the afternoon sun, the fact that they keep reappearing does nothing to lessen the way they stun her with their beauty.

Maybe she _isn’t_ fine. But she wasted years of her life being fine in the Circle. This is _so much better_ than being fine.

She’s staring open-mouthed straight back at the sky when she realizes that Duncan has walked away but Alistair hasn’t.

He’s watching her with a half smile on his face, but unlike most of his smiles this one is entirely serious. “I didn’t want to have to help you prepare, you know. I was afraid I’d like you. I cried after one of the other recruits didn’t make it in my own Joining—no one warned me that I shouldn’t let myself like him. The others—you haven’t met them yet, but you will—they all laughed. About me crying, I mean, not about the recruit who died. I probably shouldn’t tell you that—I should probably be incredibly embarrassed about it—but there it is. Anyway, I’m… I’m glad you survived.”

“Mmm. Thank you. I’m rather pleased about that myself.”

He just keeps half smiling for a while, and then he shakes his head and when he’s done his smile is that same smirk that earlier made her feel like vital organs were floating weightlessly away from their normal spaces inside her. It is not unlike the feeling she used to get when Neria, practicing the finer points of some force spell, would unexpectedly foist her into the air by her ankle. This is decidedly more pleasant than that though. “If the king wants to see you and Duncan, you probably shouldn’t keep him waiting. He might get mad and start crying. You’ll feel bad, and, well, it won’t be pretty.”

She laughs. She’s always laughed too often and too loud, even in the Circle where every lesson was about self-control and holding in things that want to escape and keeping out things that have no place, and she was otherwise a good, quiet mage. In the Circle, she would have laughed, but she would not have dared to respond. Now she dares. “Sure, that’s me, the girl with the power to bring the king to his knees in tears.”

“Yes, it just goes to show, even kings can exercise good taste now and then. Just don’t let him dress you. He’d pick something large and poufy and pink and hideous.”

She wonders for the second time since she met him if he is flirting with her. Is saying that someone is “good taste” flirting? The mere thought spawns a kaleidoscope of butterflies behind her belly button. _Don’t be foolish_. Of course he isn’t. While every step beyond the iron doors of Kinloch Hold has been like a step into a brand new world, she has not _actually_ fallen off the face of Thedas, and there are laws that govern the universe. And they state that men raised to be templars in the Chantry do _not_ flirt with mages. _Ever_.

“Huh. And here I thought it was more customary to warm women not to let men _un_ dress them.” She has only ever bantered like this with Neria, who was like a sister, and Jowan, who, as hard as it is to admit it now, was like a brother then, and it does not cross her mind until the words are out of her mouth that they may lead her somewhere she has never been, somewhere out of her depth at the shallow shore.

“Well if he tries _that_ , you should definitely jinx his thumbs off and see how much luck he has accomplishing the task with no opposable digits.” Alistair’s smirk says plainly that he’s delighted to have a verbal sparring partner who can keep up with him.

She’s moving to leave when a retort occurs to her, and she shouldn’t say it because she knows it’s _definitely_ out of her depth, but she might have _died_ tonight and she didn’t, and there are stars like an infinite horde of jewels shining down on them, and he smiles like sunlight, so she does, calling back over her shoulder as she hurries away, “He could always use his teeth.”

 

 

She’s never worn anything other than Circle robes before. How proud she’d been when she exchanged her apprentice robes for proper mage robes. She’d felt like everything had changed. In a good way, just for a moment, just until… She doesn’t want to think about the Circle. That’s someone else’s life. Someone she left behind. And there is nothing about this that should remind her of it anyway. The sensation of the soft, thin, flexible suede leggings hugging her legs is foreign. Despite it, she feels almost naked without the skirts of her robes fluttering around her ankles. Even once she slips on the linen tunic and the blue and silver striped scale armor, open at the side where it buckles, and after she pulls on the long leather gloves and high leather boots, she feels half naked, as if her flesh is on display. It terrifies her.

As she turns, she catches a glimpse of her shadow, curves and lines as exposed as she feared. As the fire outside the tent dances, though, unlike herself, standing there stiffly, the shadow undulates, wild, free, fearless. That is who she is now, she tells herself. Wild, free, fearless. For a moment, the frightened thing that has cowered in her chest for so long—for as long as she’s walked hallways lined with watching templars—hears her and believes her and shrinks.


	4. Where Kingly Death Keeps His Pale Court

The King is talking about battle strategies that sound arrogantly foolhardy to her. Instead of his plans, she is simply considering him. He’s handsome in what she has come to think of as a very _Ferelden_ sort of way—blond hair, long eyelashes, square jaw. Like Cullen back in the Tower. Like Alistair. But he makes her heart pound too hard with fear of humiliating herself in front of a monarch to entertain any idiotic, girlish flutterings of her heart. She guesses that she looks as frightened as she feels, because he smiles a lot and speaks to her rather gently. He makes her keenly aware of her uncertainty of how she is supposed to behave, what she’s supposed to say. She wishes she had not had to come. She wishes she were sitting around Duncan’s fire with Alistair. Especially when Teyrn Loghain speaks. He chills her. It’s more than just the zealous xenophobia with which he insists that they need no aid from Orlais. He chills her the way Knight-Captain Terrel put ice in her veins, and she will never forget the day he was found with bloody hands still wrapped around the throat of a lifeless eight-year-old mage. Rumor had it he was put to death for it. She hopes that rumor was true.

The chill feels like some kind of premonition, but there is no branch of real magic that reads the future or tells fortunes, every Circle mage knows that, so she tries to dismiss the feeling. After all, he is a teyrn, and she is just a mage barely beyond her Harrowing. What does she know?

She does know one thing. Alistair is _not_ going to be happy about being elected as a torch lighter rather than being allowed to fight in the coming battle.

She is right about Alistair’s displeasure. He whines; he pouts; he nearly argues with Duncan. In the end though he acquiesces. “I get it; I get it. Just so you know, if the king ever asks me to put on a dress and dance the Remigold, I’m drawing the line. Darkspawn or no.”

She can’t help it. Her formal posture facing Duncan melts as she turns to Alistair grinning. “I think I’d like to see that.”

He perks up, the smirk she’s so quickly become so fond of slithering across his features. “For you, maybe. But it has to be a pretty dress.”

Duncan sighs. She can tell by those rare occasions when he laughs that, in the life he lived before this one, he was a man given to amusement. His sigh is so over exaggerated that she’s sure he’s just trying to hide the fact that they make him want to laugh too.

 

 

For something that is supposed to be a formality, making their way through the Tower of Ishal is nothing like they expect. There are small fires everywhere, and few windows. The air is so thick with smoke that it almost seems like they’re wading through it. And in the midst, darkspawn keep appearing. At one point Alistair rushes forward while she hesitates and for a long moment she thinks she’ll never find him again, nearly blind as she is, amid the crackle of fire consuming things, the ring of metal on metal, the cries of things dying. When he grabs one of her shoulders suddenly, telling her to stay close, she hardly needs the telling. After that she stays near Alistair, barriers up, staff ready. 

Up and up and up, dizzy and lost but for the blaze of golden hair she keeps following, until they reach the top. And then it gets so much worse.

The ogre waiting there is _eating a person_. Like he is an ear of corn. Her stomach heaves violently, threatening to spill its contents. Not that there’s much to spill other than darkspawn blood.

The ogre is impossibly large. He is nearly _impossible_ to defeat. He’s too massive and solid to shatter when hit while in the grip of Winter’s Grasp. His rubbery skin seems to repel half of her lightening and fire attacks. And then her mana is gone, and she can _feel_ the Fade like a cold room just behind the Veil, but she can pull nothing from it. The creature is exhausted too though, and when Alistair finally sees his chance, springs forward, and thrusts his sword through the thing’s throat, it is an almost majestic moment.

But there’s still the beacon to light, so no moment to appreciate any majesty. Once it’s lit there are suddenly no more moments for anything. When she faced both her Harrowing and her Joining there was a chance of survival. Now there is no end to the stream of darkspawn pouring into the room. There is no chance. There is no hope.

 


	5. I Walked Forth Upon the Glittering Grass

There is sunlight coming in through a window, but there are no windows in the dormitories in the Circle. And she’s in a bed, though the sheets are softer than she’s used to and smell of crystal grace instead of elfroot, so she must be in a dormitory. It’s really very puzzling. Almost enough to convince her to open her eyes. But not yet…

And then she remembers, jerking upright in the bed with a gasp. The darkspawn. The ogre. Lighting the beacon later than they should have. And then the endless flood of more darkspawn, a flurry of arrows, and… What?

She’s moved too quickly; the world goes fuzzy and black around the edges, and she has to brace herself to keep from falling back over into the bed. She realizes there’s someone else in the room when the woman turns to face her. The apostate from the Wilds. She listens almost in a daze to everything the girl says, a hollow, cold feeling rolling through her when she understands that Loghain betrayed them. She just wishes she knew how they really got here. No one can turn into a giant bird, not even the girl's discomfiting mother.

When Morrigan gets to the part about the “other Grey Warden” waiting for her outside, she stumbles out of the bed as fast as she had jerked upright, and nearly falls over again. It is only then that she realizes that she’s only wearing her small clothes (she double checks to make sure they are really her small clothes and not a strange new outfit that Morrigan, given her evident fashion sense, has contrived for her: they are). She has to struggle with getting herself properly contained in her clothing and armor (freshly laundered, the clothes smell like crystal grace too; after so long without, the feeling of being fresh and clean is an exquisiteness she has never really appreciated until now) before she can hurry out to him. When she reaches the door, she pauses and says sincerely to her strange rescuer, “Thank you for helping me, Morrigan.” The young woman hardly knows how to respond.

Alistair looks at her like she is a miracle. As though she is fragile and precious and even a little dear to him. She does not know how to handle the kind of intense attention he is directing at her, so she tries to redirect some of it at Morrigan’s mother. It works. When the woman tells them her name, Alistair gets carried away with the notion that she is indeed the creature of legend that Daveth had suggested. Had he been paying more attention to her, he might have noticed that what she actually said was, “The Chasind people call me Flemeth,” which, to Solona, sounds more like, “The local people call me after a figure in one of their myths.” Because Chantry boys might be raised with the gullible ignorance to believe such nonsense, but if there’s _one_ thing the Circle gifted her with, it’s a better education than _that_.

Somehow, entirely too quickly, the conversation is over, and they are departing. Thanks to Flemeth, they have a plan, a few supplies, and even another companion, albeit a reluctant one (still, what she says to Alistair is true, they _can_ use all the help they can get, even if Morrigan does make it clear that she's less than enthusiastic about joining them). Perhaps it is just that she has spent her whole life up to now a Circle mage and there are many things she doesn’t understand, but her uncertainty of Flemeth’s motivations makes her almost hesitant to accept her generosity. Though softer than her daughter, with her rough edges, perhaps, the woman is not _kind_ , and an offer of such abundant help while seeming to ask for nothing in return is a deal that Solona cannot entirely trust. But what choice is there? They _do_ need whatever help they can get.

Secretly, she wonders if there is any real chance that they will succeed. Alistair cannot be far into his twenties. She wonders if he even knows that she’s only seventeen. But every time he asks, “We can do this, right?” she smiles reassuringly and nods and says, “Of course. Of course we can.”

 

 

They walk for days through the wilderness. Though Flemeth has given them some supplies (including bedrolls filled with something soft for sleeping on, which though thin are a mercy to Solona, who finds the hard ground quite the adjustment after seventeen years in a bed), each day they discover another thing that they need but don’t have. Alistair is abnormally quiet, and Morrigan is expectedly silent, so the list of what they need joins with the list of places they must go and allies they must win and becomes a sort of litany in Solona’s mind. _Arl Eamon in Redcliffe, the elves in the Brecilian Forest, the dwarves in Orzammar, (mages)_ (this part always mentally voiced in a nearly incomprehensible imaginary mutter) _, a kettle, bowls, tents, more blankets_. In Lothering, Morrigan tells them, they will procure all they need. Just outside the village, Alistair, who has been staring silently at the ground, raises his head sharply and freezes, one arm shooting out to grip Solona’s and pull her to a stop next to him. “Do you feel that?”

She feels many things. Uncomfortable. Exhausted. Aching. Worried about how quiet Alistair has been. And there is something about Morrigan’s presence, about how untamed she is by anyone’s expectations of her, that makes Solona feel like a people-pleasing fool and an obedient slave to the Chantry that despises her. But she doesn’t think any of these things are what Alistair is talking about. So she stills herself and tries to focus. And yes, there is something… an unpleasant tug at her attention. It isn’t related to any sense she is familiar with, not touch, taste, vision, smell, sound, nor even related to the Fade, but there… like a whispering but without sound, drawing her attention. “Darkspawn?”

He nods grimly.

She is so focused on the direction where she can sense the darkspawn, that when a sudden booming sound breaks the silence from right _behind_ her, she nearly topples over with shock. And then an enormous shape blurs past her, awful, low, menacing growls emanating from it. Had she been the thing’s target she would surely have been dead before she or either of her companions could have done anything. The mammoth blur leaps suddenly as a hurlock appears between the trees, and when its jaws close around the Blighted creature’s throat, she realizes what it is. _Mabari_.

With the hound’s help, it only takes a few moments to deal with the darkspawn, and when the last one falls, it’s like a rock sinking beneath the surface of a lake. The ripples that whispered, “Darkspawn,” to her slowly settle. “There aren’t any more, are there?”

“Not alive.” Alistair grins, and though it is a feral expression, she thinks that maybe this fight is what he needed, to deal back death to the creatures that killed his friends, to be reminded by the velocity of battle that he himself _is_ still alive.

The mabari trots over to her, sits back on his haunches, and puts his front paws on Solona’s stomach with surprising gentleness. Which is good, because without gentleness, he could easily knock her onto her own hindquarters. He barks happily, and though loud it’s an entirely different sound than the thunderous noise he directed at the darkspawn.

His look is one of worshipful adoration. She has never been the object of anything like it. Though his big, deep brown eyes are different when they aren’t staring up at her miserably from her lap, she is certain this is the same dog that she whispered to on the night of her Joining.

Alistair thinks so too. “I think he was out there looking for you. He’s… chosen you. Mabaris are like that. They call it imprinting.”

She is sure she would be fond of him even without this, without the look of complete devotion he is giving her, as though he’s telling her, “I would step in front of darkspawn for you. I would die for you. I love you.” The only person who she remembers ever telling her, “I love you,” is Neria. After Neria’s Harrowing, she had truly not expected to ever be _loved_ again. It worms its way inside of her, and she is helpless not to return it.

Morrigan is not impressed. “Does this mean we’re going to have this mangy beast following us about now? Wonderful.”

Alistair glares at her, then kneels beside Solona and scratches the hound’s ears. “He’s not mangy!” The ridiculous baby voice he uses is, to Solona, the most adorable thing she has ever heard. She has an irrational urge to scratch Alistair’s head the same way he is scratching the mabari’s. Instead, she strokes the dog’s nose fondly. She knows what she will call him.

The morning when they stayed at the inn with the bard, Duncan had the serving girl bring her breakfast in her room. It was a muffin, a treat she had never known in the Circle. She had expected it to be like bread. It was so much _better_. Sweet and unexpected.

She will call him Muffin.


	6. What Splendor of What Stars

Lothering is, in all, a success. Not only do they get all the supplies they need, they get a Chantry sister and a qunari as well. Which is great, because it significantly reduces how often Solona has to pull watch duty when they set up camp at night.

Leliana is slender but sinewy when she exchanges her brightly colored Chantry robes for leather armor. With her hair shiny as a newly minted copper and her exotic accent, she has an ability to draw the eye and keep it that Solona has never encountered before. And yet despite this, despite that she is warm and friendly and hardly _quits_ speaking, Solona can’t help feeling like she’s hiding something, like all of her talk is meant to distract _from_ her, not draw attention _to_ her. There is something genuinely sweet about her, though. She has to bite back a laugh when Alistair mutters, “More crazy? I thought we were all full up,” but truth be told there is something more than the fact that they _still_ need all the help they can get that makes her want to bring Leliana with them. Despite Morrigan’s sometimes coldness, she likes her. But she does not think Morrigan thinks of her as a friend. And she wants one of those. More badly than she should admit.

The qunari is…reticent. He reluctantly gives his name as Sten. Solona has a hard time trying to articulate, even to herself, what it is that makes her so determined to see him released from the cage they find him held prisoner in. In the end, she decides that he reminds her of herself. He is a stranger in a strange land, unfamiliar with the customs. He has been deemed guilty by those who would have been willing to find him so even if he had _not_ committed a crime. He reminds her of herself the night Duncan saved her from being made Tranquil. She was as guilty of her crime as Sten admits to being. She aided a blood mage; that she did not know Jowan was one does not change that. Had there been no Duncan at the Circle that night, she would have had to resign herself to her fate in the same manner as the qunari. Perhaps aiding a friend who turns out to be an atrocious, lying maleficar is not equal to murdering an entire family, but she senses a story that runs deeper than he is willing to reveal. And for all that he claims to have no shame over his actions, everything about him says otherwise. Even she, a mage, has been allowed a chance to be something better than what she has been. Why should this proud man deserve less?

 

 

What they also acquire as they leave the little village are a blundering merchant and his savant enchanter son. She isn’t exactly sure _how_ they acquire the pair, given that when the last of the darkspawn attacking the two of them just outside of the village lies dead they all agree that it wouldn’t exactly be safe for the merchant or the boy to travel with them, but when she and Leliana return from freshening up at the stream a short distance from camp that night (she refuses to call the activity bathing—bathing involves stone basins big enough to lounge in and steaming water), it is to find Bodahn in Alistair’s usual place in front of the fire, sizzling something that, unlike Alistair’s best efforts, smells delicious. Alistair is beside him, chatting and watching his ministrations with rapt attention. Sandal is sitting on the ground with Muffin, evidently playing some sort of hand and paw stacking game while Sten watches them with more interest than she can think of any explanation for. For an instant she hopes he isn’t planning to butcher them, but something about how he watches them, despite the blank disinterest of his expression, makes her smile.

In the morning, the groups go their separate ways, but that evening again, an hour after Solona and her companions have set up camp, as dusk is turning to twilight, the clip clop of mule hooves and the creak of wooden wheels announce the dwarves' presence. She doesn’t know how this happened or how long it can last, but sitting cozily in front of the fire, listening to her companions’ chattering, Sandal’s laughter, and Muffin’s happy barks, she catches a sense of something she hasn’t felt since Neria left her and Kinloch Hold became nothing more to her than a pile of cold stones she couldn’t escape: she doesn’t know what to name it, but it makes her think of sitting next to Jowan on one of the couches in the Circle library, Neria’s head in her lap and her legs draped across Jowan. It is… sweet. And because she knows how fleeting sweetness is, she reminds herself to savor it.

 

 

Darkness… she is surrounded by darkness. The sky has been swallowed by it, the stars all snuffed out, and instead, distantly below her, lights flicker. Darkspawn. Thousands of darkspawn. More than she could ever defeat. If they came one at a time, it would be… infinite. And there, presiding over all the terror below, huge, horrible, breathing rivers of fire, shrieking when it lays eyes on her—

She jerks from her dream, slips sideways from where she was sitting in front of the fire leaning against a tree trunk, and falls over. She feels like an upside down bug, all waving arms and scrambling and no progress, when she feels someone gripping her arms, hauling her upright.

“It’s all right! Solona, you’re all right.” Alistair props her back up against the tree before he carefully lets go of her. “Bad dreams, huh?”

She pushes stray hairs from her face and gives him a grateful smile, hoping he can't see the anxiety under it. “Must have been something I ate.” A lie, of course, but what mage admits how often even innocent bad dreams visit her, even to just an _almost_ -templar? When she sat down here, she had only been planning to stay by the fire for a few minutes before heading to her tent. She supposes it’s a good thing she had that nightmare out here though. She’d probably have ended up hopelessly tangled up inside a collapsed tent if it had happened in there.

He laughs ruefully. If the templar in him recognizes the lie, he doesn't acknowledge it. “Drank, more like. As in the tainted blood, remember?” He explains to her about the nightmares waiting for her as a Grey Warden. About the archdemon.

She feels sick. Her dreams have always been a dangerous place, the way they lay her bare to demons. At least archdemons have their own bodies. She feels a delirious urge to cackle about the fact that at least _it_ isn’t going to try to possess her. And then he tells her that the dreams were scary at first for him too. And something cracks inside her.

Because she knows he isn’t exactly a templar, but he can silence mages, and he was _raised_ in the Chantry, and she didn’t expect him to ever just make himself _vulnerable_ to her like that, to admit his fear to her. Templars never reveal their weaknesses to mages. Instead of cackling, she whispers, “Thank you, Alistair. I appreciate it.”

His grin isn’t that smirk that melts her, but it is disarmingly charming. “That’s what I’m here for. To deliver unpleasant news and witty one-liners.” 

She laughs softly, and her head falls back. Her breath catches. Once again, countless stars have appeared to adorn the darkness. After watching her for a moment, Alistair sits down beside her and tilts his own head back. “Look—there—the group of stars that look like a crossbow—do you see?”

She laughs again. “That’s like asking if I see the strands of hay in a bale that look like they’re making the letter A”

“No, really,” and he scoots closer, so close that the outside of his thigh rubs against hers. It takes a few minutes of patient questions and answers, and by the time she figures out _which_ stars he means, she has shifted around behind him, her legs curled around his body, her chin on his shoulder, and if she weren’t so legitimately caught up in figuring out what he’s talking about, she’d be embarrassed by the intimacy. Instead she reaches out and grabs his upper arm, squeezing the metal scaling excitedly. “Yes! Next to that little group that looks like a spoon! _Those_ stars! Right! So what about them?”

“That’s a constellation. It’s called Sacrifice.”

“Why? It looks like… a ribcage.”

“It’s supposed to be a seated woman with her head in the clouds… What? Constellations require a little imagination. Alright, a lot of imagination. Anyhow, it’s got a story. It’s about a young woman and her father and a maleficar. Do you want to hear it?”

“Of course.” As though it is the most natural thing in the world, she rests her head on his shoulder again. Not because she is trying to line up her head with his so she can see what he is seeing anymore. Just because it is right there, and it’s comfortable, and comforting. It feels right.

“It starts with a beautiful girl picking marigolds in a field…”


	7. Loose Upon the Midnight Air

Not that she blamed Alistair for his brooding silence on the way to Lothering—she still remembers how hard Neria’s loss was on her, and that was only the loss of one person she cared for, not the massacre of _everyone_ she cared for—but she is pleased at the revival of his roguish humor. When telling her about how often he was punished when living in the Chantry—more than he can count, he says—he leans in so close that she can feel his breath moving her hair and intones, “And that’s a lot; I can count pretty high.” Somehow, he makes it sound as though he is saying something suggestive to her. She thinks suddenly about the word hysterical, about how it means, “wandering womb,” and she wanders why _this_ isn’t what that word means, this floating, fluttering feeling in her stomach. She half hates herself for it. He’s just being Alistair, funny and adorable, and she’s being an _idiot_.

Alistair and Leliana seem to take it in turns to walk next to her. When Leliana appears, a stream of babble pouring from her mouth and her hands fluttering in gestures that may or may not be related, she has a way of squeezing between Solona and Alistair until he falls back. Leliana touches her a lot. She pluck leaves from her hair and smoothes it down; she touches the back of her arm just above her elbow for no particular reason. When she discovers Solona’s enchantment with music, she takes to appearing suddenly, grabbing Solona’s hands, and dancing her away, singingly giddily. Solona cannot help herself. She loves the dancing. It is too bad Alistair is always in such large, heavy armor. She thinks he would topple over if she tried to drag him into a dance the way Leliana drags her. She is determined that, some night at camp when he isn’t on watch and has shed his armor, she will make him dance with her.

When she makes her way back to his side, slightly out of breath, after one such episode, his expression is glum, and he won’t meet her gaze. They’ve stopped to refill their waterskins in a small river that empties into Lake Calenhad, and he’s leaning against a tree, arms crossed, head bowed. She thinks about how the worst wounds never just heal in a week. She thinks about how some people need space when they’re hurt, and some just need anyone to hold on to, and she knows which kind Alistair is, and she feels like an ass for not asking what she knows needs to be asked sooner. “Hey, Alistair… do you… do you want to talk about Duncan?”

He finally meets her eyes, so surprised looking for a moment that she wonders if maybe this isn’t what was on his mind. Finally he just smiles sadly at her. “You don’t have to do that. I know you didn’t know him as long as I did.”

“I just thought you might need to talk.” She gives him an encouraging smile.

His head drops with shame. “I… should have handled it better. Duncan warned me right from the beginning that this could happen. Any of us could die in battle. I shouldn’t have lost it, not when so much is riding on us, not with the Blight and… and everything. I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head firmly. “There’s no need to apologize.”

One corner of his mouth rises slightly in acknowledgement. “I’d… like to have a proper funeral for him. Maybe once this is all done, if we’re still alive. I don’t think he had any family to speak of.”

“He had you.” Her voice is soft, almost entreating.

The corner of his mouth rises another fraction of an inch. “I suppose he did.” And then his face droops and his lip trembles and she thinks he’s going to cry. “It probably sounds stupid, but part of me wishes I was with him. In the battle. I feel like I abandoned him.”

She will never tell anyone, but she knows exactly how this feels. A thousand times since the night the templars came and collected Neria from her bed, she has thought, if she had just been able to go with her, if she’d been there to help her… She can see Morrigan moving closer to them, and she’s thinking about how mercilessly she’s teased Alistair already about crying. So she reaches out and lays a palm against his cheek, willing him strength, not because she thinks it makes him weak to cry, but because she knows it would embarrass him to do so in front of Morrigan. “No, I understand completely.”

He just lets her hand rest against his face for a moment before he manages a smile. In it she can almost see his cheeky humor under the bleakness. “Of course I’d be dead then, wouldn’t I? It’s not like that would make him happier.” She lets her hand slip from his face. He shakes his head and looks out into the trees. “I think he came from Highever, or so he said. Maybe I’ll go out there sometime, see about putting up something in his honor. I don’t know.” And then his gaze is on hers again, the amber heavy as stone. “Have you… had someone close to you die? Not that I mean to pry, I’m just…”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. She considers telling him she doesn’t want to talk about it, or just lying and saying no. She’s never cared for talking about her own feelings; Neria was always the only one who could coax them out of her. But something about Alistair’s willingness to lay all of his vulnerabilities before her makes her feel like he deserves no less in return. “When I was taken to the Circle, it was like having my whole family die. But that was a long time ago. In the Circle… there are things worse than death.”

The way she’s standing with her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, unwilling to look at him, must tell him that she doesn’t want to talk about it more than this, because, even though she knows he must be curious, he just says softly, “I’m sorry.”

 

 

At some point during the two weeks they spend walking to Redcliffe, in between his jokes and even though he seems to be avoiding directly saying it, she realizes that Alistair was actually raised by this Arl Eamon that they are going to see before he was sent to the Chantry. His concern over the rumors they have heard of the man’s poor health take on a new meaning. She wonders if the man is really his father. She waits until Leliana is ahead of them trying to talk to a distinctly disinterested Morrigan about using satin ribbons to lace her armor. “So you said this Arl Eamon raised you?”

He raises his eyebrows in mock confusion. “Did I say that? I meant that dogs raised me. Giant, slobbering dogs from the Anderfels. A whole pack of them, in fact.”

She laughs and nods. “That _would_ explain the smell.”

“Well in wasn’t until I was eight that I discovered you didn’t have to lick yourself clean. Old habits die hard, you know.”

She puts on an expression of enlightenment. “Ah. That would explain the breath as well then.”

“And my table manners too. Though come to think of it, they weren’t all that different from the other templars. Or did I dream all of that? Funny the dreams you’ll have when you sleep on the cold, hard ground, isn’t it. Are you having strange dreams?”

“Yes. They all involve strangling you.”

He blinks at her, his exaggerated innocence unfairly adorable. “You would do violence? Upon me? I am shocked and dismayed. The dogs would never threaten me like this, you know.” And then he grins and shakes his head, her combatant humor having evidently won her an honest answer. “Let’s see. How do I explain this? I’m a bastard. And before you make any smart comments, I mean the fatherless kind. My mother was a serving girl in Redcliffe Castle who died when I was very young. Arl Eamon wasn’t my father, but he took me in anyhow, and put a roof over my head. He was good to me, and he didn’t have to be. I respect the man, and I don’t blame him anymore for sending me off to the Chantry once I was old enough.”

She considers his response. “You blamed him then, I take it?”

“I was young and resentful and _not_ very pious. Of course I blamed him. I remember screaming at him like a little child… well, I was a child, so I doubt he was surprised.” He tells her about the arl’s young wife, who hated him, about breaking a locket that had belonged to his mother, the only thing he’d had of hers. He tells her about how he hated the Chantry. And with a sort of sad irony she realizes that she herself, a mage caged in the Circle, was happier in her unchosen childhood home than this man who would have grown up to guard her cage in another life.

She can see how he blames himself for the rift between himself and the Arl. Worse, she can see how, even though it isn’t what he’s saying, he’s worried that how he acted years ago will hurt their cause now. He’s wondering if Arl Eamon will make the Grey Wardens pay for his own mistakes.

As though it is an act of absolution, as though she _has_ the power to absolve him, she says gently, “You were young.”

He ducks his head and looks at her through his golden lashes. “And raised by dogs. Or I may as well have been, the way I acted. But maybe all young bastards act like that. I don’t know.”

 

 

“Alistair! Alistair! _Look_!”

She’s running down the path, eyes locked on the sky, face blazing with an expression of wild delight. Nearly there, she discovers the dangers of running without looking when she stumbles, feet catching on some rock or divot that she never sees. Her head collides with the hard ridges of a griffon emblazoned chest plate with a _thwack_ , but she only braces one hand on Alistair’s arm to push herself back up right. The other comes up to rub at an already reddening spot on her forehead absently, as though her hand is the only part of herself aware that she’s smacked her head. The delight on her face does not even flinch. Her eyes are already scanning the sky again, looking for what she lost sight of when she stumbled.

“Maker’s mercy, Solona, are you—“

She brushes impatiently at the hand that’s trying to turn her face so he can check what damage has been done, and then suddenly grips it. “There! Look!”

There’s a long silence.

“…Um. Very nice. Perhaps a bird isn’t really worth concussing yourself for though?”

“Nice?!” She drags her eyes downward to glance at him. Her face is serious, imploring. She doesn’t know why it’s so important to her that he understand what’s made her so happy. She could have gone running to Leliana instead, who would probably have accepted a purely aesthetic appreciation of the moment easily enough. But _that_ isn’t really what this is about. “When you were little, didn’t you ever wish you could just… fly away?”

He grins. “I told you about that time that the Revered Mother—“ Something in her face must convey how much this means to her, because he cuts himself off. “Um, yes. Yes, I did.”

She raises up on her toes and leans in as close to his face as she can. “ _Look_.”

For a while they just stand quietly, heads craned backward, eyes tracking arabesques and pirouettes through the air. Finally, he gives a small chuckle, and in the sound is a hint of wonder. “Okay. It _is_ kind of amazing.”

“It is a vulture.” Morrigan’s voice is decidedly nonplussed as she passes them.

“That’s just the reflection in your looking glass, harpy.” Softer, just to Solona, he murmurs, “Don’t listen to her. It’s a hawk.”

 

 

Alistair is quiet the last night before they reach Redcliffe. He says little after he points out the constellation Shadow and tells her its story, a sort of ritual that the two of them have developed and maintained every night after camp is made since he told her the story of the constellation Sacrifice. He sits quietly, his fingers twirling between them a rose she has seen him fiddling with several times over the last two weeks. She’d wonder how it still looks so perfect and fresh and red, but she recognizes the box he’s been keeping it in as one of the boxes templars keep their lyrium in. It’s indistinct enough from the outside, but the carved figure of Andraste on the inside of the lid gives it away.

She doesn’t realize how reliant on his teasing and babbling she’s become since they left Lothering until it ceases. The quiet sets her on edge, keeps making her feel like something is wrong. She is about to try to pry from him the reason for his silence when Leliana pops down beside her.

“You have such lovely hair. Red as poppies. It must be so long! Can I take it down? I haven’t the patience for long hair myself, but I love playing with others’.” Without actually waiting for a response, her long, slender fingers are pulling the pins from Solona’s twin buns and then unplaiting the strands.

Alistair is watching them with a slight frown on his face. She makes a half exasperated, half amused face at him, but he doesn’t smile back. She glances over her shoulder at Leliana’s rapidly moving fingers. “Just don’t get it in the dirt.”

“Is it that long?! Ohhh, look, it is! So beautiful. And soft. And it even smells nice! How do you smell nice after weeks of walking through the wilderness and sleeping in the dirt? I smell like Muffin, and you, you smell like… like the incense they burn in the Chantry before it’s lit.”

This is, of course, nonsense. Solona is sure she smells just about as bad as anyone has ever smelled right now, but she doesn’t argue. She is still worried about Alistair, but the Orlesian's lilting voice is distracting her from her anxiety. When Leliana finally has her hair loose and free, she begins to run her fingers through it all the way down to the scalp. It is an exquisite feeling that the tension in her cannot stand against. A sound escapes her before she can stop it, and the noise is… almost sinful. Her eyes snap open embarrassedly to catch Alistiar’s dark frown riveted to her. When she meets his gaze, he looks away, muttering something. She thinks it sounds like, “Chantry sister, my arse,” but that only perplexes her a moment before she gives into the relaxation pooling inside her and stops thinking coherent thoughts at all.


	8. Doubtful Dreams of Dreams

The dreams have been bad since the night she woke before the fire with Alistair watching her. _Every_ night since. If not the horde of darkspawn writhing their way up from below the earth, then just nightmares. A dozen different ones every night, though she remembers only flashes in the morning. Morrigan standing between two templars, the foul stamp of the Tranquil on her forehead and eyes that hold no more sarcasm or any of that ferocious strength of will Solona so admires. Sten standing over Alistair and Leliana’s bloody bodies, searching for something. Ghostly figures of a farmer and his family tearing Sten from limb to limb, screaming, “Justice!” Leliana calling out and crying in a dark, empty Chantry while no one listens. Each and every one of her companions being killed by darkspawn, or by the archdemon himself. In her dreams she second-guesses every decision that it has somehow fallen to her to make and sees her companions pay with their lives for her wrong decisions.

Which is why, even though she knows it’s a dream, standing in a sunlit meadow that smells of wildflowers with Alistair is a sweet relief. He’s laughing about something, glorious and golden in the beams of light that pour like liquid over him. He’s in the simple clothing he wears under his armor: leather trousers and a linen tunic. And then, smiling at her, he pulls the tunic over his head. His chest is perfect as a sculpture—which rather makes sense, as sculptures must be whence her imagination is drawing inspiration. She’s certainly never seen a real man’s real chest in real life. When he steps towards her, she lets out an awkward cackle of laughter.

Her heart begins to beat erratically, clenching painfully in her chest. _It’s only a dream_ , she reminds herself. Why is she even dreaming about this? It’s ridiculous. Some small part of her thinks weakly that she should stop this, should dream of something else. But still he stalks slowly toward her. Closer and closer. Until he’s only a breath away from her. So close that if she were to inhale deeply her breasts would press against his chest. But she can’t breathe properly, can’t think straight. He leans in so close to her ear that she can feel his breath tickle her neck when he speaks. “I know what you want.”

She closes her eyes. “I want to end the Blight before it really begins.” She doesn’t know why she bothers with such a half-truth except that she’s always been stubborn.

He chuckles and she shudders. “That’s sweet. But I know your darkest desires.”

“I want Loghain to pay for what he did.”

“Mm. So sweet…” His hand comes up and she can feel his thumb across her bottom lip. She feels suddenly like a wild animal, caught, trembling, and she thinks that she ought to run away, but then he ceases stroking her lip and trails his fingers along her jaw to her neck and thought flickers out like a lit candle being snuffed. Maker help her, she didn’t even know, not really, how she burned for him before he touched her, his skin like a flint igniting her own. It burns so fiercely it _hurts_.

“So sweet. I bet you taste sweet as honey. I know what you want.” He turns his face slowly until his forehead rests against hers, his lips an inch from hers. “I want what you want. I can give it to you. You just have to… let me in.”

Her head is swimming with his proximity. Her frantically beating heart actually _aches_ in her chest. For an instant she considers tilting her chin, pressing her lips against his. It is only a dream after all. Why shouldn’t she have a sweet dream just once?

And then his words penetrate the haze; her eyes fly open, and her hands fly up, throwing him away from her. “Demon!” she hisses.

With a laugh that is nothing like Alistair’s, the figure changes. “Clever girl. Sweet as sin.”

She usually prefers ice or lighting to fire, but here in the Fade itself, every bit of magic comes easily. She watches the creature flare red, flames rising high above it, and burn bright for a moment before melting away more quickly than anything with any real substance ever could, leaving only a pile of ash.

The feeling of wrongness from earlier in the night amplifies. She wants to check on Alistair, on the real Alistair. His quietness and the strangeness of her dream are twisting together, intensifying her concern for him. And then she’s sitting up in her bedroll, awake.

She thinks she’s awake anyway. She hates dreams like that. Like miniature Harrowings. Treacherously confusing. Insidiously dangerous. And she has grown careless. The Circle was warded to strengthen the Veil, to try to help keep the demons away, but here she is entirely exposed. She should have known the demon for what it was much sooner. She should have known that there are no sweet dreams for mages.

Muffin whimpers softly and places his big head on her thigh. She strokes his ear a moment, then crawls to the flap of her tent and lifts one edge. Alistair is still on watch duty. He sits by the fire, tracing a pattern she can’t see into the dirt with a stick. At the sound of her movement, his head turns. When he sees her face he drops the stick, and she isn’t sure if the motion he makes with his hand is because she’s startled him or if he’s intentionally wiping away whatever it was he was drawing, but he looks around with concern before rising from the ground and walking over to her.

She thinks of her dream and wonders how close he will come, but he stops a foot away and crouches before her. “You okay?”

She doesn’t know what to say— _No, I had a dream where a demon took your form and tried to kiss me_?—so she just nods stupidly.

“More bad dreams?”

 _It was actually rather nice until I realized you were a demon_. She nods again.

He looks sad. “I wish I could tell you it will get better.” And then he reaches out and brushes a strand of hair back from her face. It’s a simple touch, meant only as friendly comfort, but it rekindles something from her dream. She feels her face flush and hopes he cannot see it in the dark. She could almost curse the light from the stars that every other night she has revered. _So stupid_. He’s only trying to be kind because he thinks she’s having nightmares about the darkspawn horde.

She fixes her eyes on his ear, because she can’t meet his gaze. “It wasn’t a Grey Warden thing. It’s a mage thing.” She doesn’t know why she’s telling him this. She should have just told him that it’s fine, that she is fine. He’s going to be horrified. He’s going to silence her. It’s the only sensible thing to do.

“…Do you want to talk about it?”

She can’t help laughing quietly. Every time she expects him to act like a templar, he surprises her. She half wonders why she keeps expecting him to at all. “Because I asked you if you wanted to talk about Duncan? I wasn’t doing that as a favor, and I didn’t expect you to return it.”

“No. Because you’re my friend, and you’re upset.”

In the end the reason she says nothing is that she doesn’t know what to say. He’s her friend. Of course he’s her friend. She waves him back to the campfire. “You should probably get back and quit letting me distract you before something horrible appears out of the darkness and eats all of our companions.”

“Ah, yes. The thrilling task of watching kindling turn to cinder awaits me.” He rolls his eyes as he stands. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”


	9. Is that Love? no, but Death

When morning breaks, they pack up and part ways with Bodahn and Sandal to begin the last leg of their trek to Redcliffe. They normally leave before the dwarves, but Alistair… well, there’s really no other word for it. He’s dawdling. He’s sitting in front of the fire with none of his armor on, which confuses her. When he sees her her, his head cocks to the side. “You can’t wear that today.”

She just raises her brows questioningly.

“Warden armor: great for not being killed by darkspawn; terrible for not being killed or kidnapped by anyone looking to claim Loghain’s reward for finishing what he started at Ostagar. Being on the road, in the middle of nowhere, during a Blight are all mitigating factors, but we can hardly walk right into Redcliffe like _that_. You do remember what happened in Lothering? And there were only a fraction as many people there, all distracted by, you know, needing to flee for their lives.”

This is something she hadn’t thought of. If she had, she might have stuffed her Circle robes into her pack instead of tossing them into Duncan’s fire, but then Circle robes would hardly be a lot less conspicuous than Warden armor. And the idea of wearing them is about as appealing as the idea of wearing a pair of shackles. “I don’t have anything else.”

He looks confused now. “Didn’t I give you—“ he cuts himself off, digging through his pack beside him.

“Oh! I have it.” Leliana is suddenly stepping between them, shaking out a piece of dusky blue fabric.

Solona eyes it dubiously. “That’s a dress.”

Leliana laughs. “ _Your_ dress. Alistair suggested I find you something less obvious before we left Lothering, after the… unpleasantness with the reward seekers there. I forgot to give it to you then, but I thought this would look nice on you. It should fit well enough.”

She can feel that she’s pulling a face, but she can’t help it. She likes her Warden armor. Even after weeks, it’s a bit like a costume. In Warden armor, she’s a brave Warden, on a mission to stop a Blight, not a scared little girl from the Circle who has no idea what she’s doing. Dresses are too much like Circle robes. And the girl she was in Kinloch Hold is no one she ever wants to be again. “But you get to wear armor. Why can’t I just wear armor like yours?”

“Because armor is heavy and bulky when you aren’t wearing it, whereas a dress can be fit easily into a pack. It’s nothing like what they wear in Val Royeaux, but it’s pretty, I think. I thought it would bring out your eyes.”

She sighs and takes the dress from Leliana’s outstretched hand, turning it slowly over. The laces are in entirely different places than on Circle robes. She doesn’t have any idea how to get the thing on properly. She likes to think she might have done at least a little better if she hadn’t been wriggling awkwardly on her back in her very small tent. Perhaps she’d have had better luck wandering into the woods, but it’s a bit late for that as she struggles now. When she finally reemerges from her tent, the dress is bunched and clinging in some spots and hanging awkwardly in others. She’s pretty sure Alistair is holding in a laugh before he quickly returns his attention to the fire.

Leliana just smiles sweetly at her. “Here, let me…” In moments, she’s redone all the laces, tugging and smoothing here and there, and steps back. “Lovely. And that’s just homespun wool. You’d look a dream in a nice Orlesian silk.” She can’t help thinking Leliana looks a bit calculating as she glances toward the fire. “Don’t you think, Alistair?”

She could kick Leliana, because then he _looks_ at her. She feels stupid in the dress already, without being _looked_ at.

He shrugs, his shoulders drawing nearly up to his ears before falling as he looks away again. “Yeah. It’s nice, I guess.”

She’s pretty sure that means he hates it. Maker, she wishes she were wearing her Warden armor.

On the road, she’s startled by Alistair’s sudden abandonment of his reticence yet again, bantering with her about mage robes and templar clothing. He may be gently teasing her about her dress by bringing it up, but she thinks he’s actually trying to make her feel better.

He puts his hand over his heart dramatically in response to something she has said. “Oh, ow, ow. Stab wounds to the pride are the worst.”

As she always responds, she laughs and banters back, but still she wants to know about the answer to the question she asked earlier about why he remained a templar. She thinks he’s flummoxed by the way his jokes never actually manage to distract her from what she’s asking him about.

“Listen, you don’t really want to know about my being a templar, do you? It’s really quite boring.”

She hops on to a fallen tree, a fistful of skirts rising as she holds her arms out for balance as she walks along it. She gives him a careless smile. “Then make something up.”

When he laughs, the absurd thought flitters through her head that it is like the sound of sunshine. How is it that everything about him is so unbearably bright and golden?

“You know, I like the way you think. But I guess if you’re really curious, there’s no harm in obliging.” As she hops back onto the ground, he leans in close, and for just a moment she wonders if he might lean in closer still and kiss her. Stupid thought. Instead, he says, with all of the suggestion he can muster (which is, for an innocent Chantry boy, quite a lot) in his voice, “I have a few interesting-looking moles I can show you later too, if you’re interested.”

She knows he’s only joking, but she can’t stop herself from blushing foolishly.

He tells her about what it was like for him at the Chantry. Because he was an orphan sent by an arl the students who were commoners thought he was a pompous, presuming ass; those who’d been nobles thought he was an over-reaching bastard. And he tells her about how the one thing he did enjoy was the actual training. He seems a little unsure if he should be saying that to her, probably because she’s a mage. So he brushes it aside, tells her how he never felt at home _anywhere_ until he joined the Grey Wardens.

The morning passes quickly, chatting with Alistair. Until he tells her something awful enough that it worms its way under the veneer of her happiness. They’re waiting for Sten, who’s disappeared into the woods to relieve himself, joking about the changes of being a Grey Warden. Laughing, she rears back to smack him for implying she’s fat, and he grabs her wrist and tugs upward, which draws her closer to him. “No! Don’t hit me! I bruise easily!”

For some reason he doesn’t let go. Not as he’s talking about bad dreams and not as he tells her about the Calling. Just standing there, clutching her wrist in the air, he tells her that if she’s lucky enough not to end up dead _before_ that, then she will, without a doubt, die in thirty years.

He’s repeating something Duncan said to him once, “It’s not how you die that’s important. It’s how you live.”

Sure. It’s important how you live. _Until_ you die. Then it doesn’t matter anymore.

In all the time that has elapsed since her Joining, she has not realized, has not considered the fact of the matter in these terms. _I am_ ** _tainted_**.  And the way he told her. He might have been talking about what tubers he puts in the stew. As though it’s just that unimportant, as though there’s no particular reason than that she might find the revelation upsetting. Already marked with the stain of magic and now _tainted_. His words have made her understand suddenly just what that means. And it is too much. She wrenches her arm out of his grip and walks away without saying anything else.

Slowly the pounding in her ears subsides. She thinks of her dreams of the darkspawn, the endless mass of terror and death writhing below their feet even now probably. The horror of it. Everything has a price. It’s something she’s always known. It’s why she didn’t trust Flemeth. Everything has a price. This is the price of stopping the darkspawn. Of stopping a Blight.

Eventually Alistair makes his way back to her side. The smile he gives her is almost pitiful as it begs her not to be angry at him.

“And you wondered why we kept the Joining a secret from the new recruits!”

As though it’s a joke. She has no witty banter, no clever response for him. All she can think is that _this_ is the price. “I never wondered that. I understand.”


	10. Every Wisdom Knowledge Fears to Dare

When Redcliffe Village appears, spread out below them, it seems unexpectedly soon. She is startled when she suddenly feels Alistair’s leather gloved hand wrapped around her wrist, tugging her away from the others. “Look, can we talk for a moment?”

Part of her wants to rip her arm away, to make a point of her anger. The Calling isn’t Alistair’s fault, but he didn’t have to tell her _like that_. Then again, part of her wants to rub herself against his chest like a cuddling kitten. _Stupid_. She just lets herself be dragged with him.

When they’re a distance from the others that he seems to find sufficient, he turns toward her. “I need to tell you something I, ah, probably should have told you earlier.”

When he tells her that the reason Arl Eamon raised him is that he is King Maric’s bastard son, he just spits it out. _Someone really needs to teach this boy a bit of finesse when revealing important truths_. He’s obviously nervous and uncomfortable.

It’s so unexpected that she doesn’t even know how to respond at first. She wants to be angry at him. If not about the Calling, then about having kept such a big secret from her. But when a response occurs to her, it is too fitting not to say out loud, and her anger dies in the face of her amusement. “So… you’re not just a bastard but a royal bastard?”

His relief is palpable when he returns the laugh, but it doesn’t prevent his anxiety as he explains why he didn’t tell her about this before. He tries again to tell her what his childhood was like, the bastard prince, caught between nobles and commoners, ridiculed and rejected by both. She forgives him with a pang for the lonely child he was. At least she always had friends. “I think I understand.”

He releases a held breath. “Good. I’m glad. It’s not like I got special treatment for it anyhow. At any rate, that’s it. That’s what I had to tell you. I thought you should know about it.”

“You’re sure? You’re not hiding anything else?” She grins teasingly at him.

“Beside my unholy love of fine cheeses and a minor obsession with my hair, no. That’s it. Just the prince thing.”

She laughs. “You’re a prince. Somehow I find that very…” She’s only joking when she tilts her head coyly and flutters her lashes; it is more a mockery of flirtation that anything seriously meant. “...thrilling.”

She doesn’t expect the way his cheeks flush and his shoulders draw up as though to hide his flush. She doesn’t know what it means when he stutters as he speaks. Because it _can’t_ mean anything. “I…ah… not that I would want someone to like me for that reason, but there… are worse fates.” He clears his throat nervously as he looks away, telling her how he’s in no way in line for the throne. It seems to her that until he makes the comment about how sick the arl is, he himself hasn’t realized what it might mean for… himself. He dismisses the thought quickly. “So there you have it. Now, can we move on and I’ll just pretend you still think I’m some… nobody who was too lucky to die with the rest of the Grey Wardens?”

For the first time in the conversation, she frowns at him. “That’s not really what you think, is it?”

Once again, he ducks his head and looks at her through his lashes in a way that is so innocently adorable, she thinks she would forgive him for anything. “Well… no. What I really think is that I was lucky enough to survive with you.” Without another word, he walks back to their companions, leaving her more confused than ever.

 

 

Of course they will help the people of Redcliffe. Morrigan is less than happy about it, but Morrigan is never really happy. For once, Solona feels no concern that she has not impressed Morrigan or proven herself worthy in the eyes of the apostate. These people are scared and most are too old or too young to defend themselves. So they, Solona and her companions, will defend them.

She likes Bann Teagan right away. He reminds her of Alistair. It isn’t his looks, and he has a gravity that Alistair lacks, but she imagines that the Bann is a great deal like what Alistair _will_ be like one day. If he lives long enough to cultivate that kind of sobriety before his Calling, she thinks bitterly.

When the afternoon sun turns gold, they are back in the Chantry, watching men and women scurry about frantically, everyone making their final preparations for the night to come. She wishes she were outside where she could watch the day flare and burn before it dies. But they are in here with all this fear and horror, making sure everything is ready. In the pews, small families cluster, holding one another tightly. There, the pretty barmaid, Bella, who puts up with entirely too much from the grabby bar owner, Lloyd, is laughing with a cluster of elderly men, patting their arms gently. Solona wonders if it might be better for her if Lloyd does not survive the battle that she shamed and maybe intimidated him into joining. Part of her feels guilty for her thoughts. Part of her does not. There, Kaitlyn, who they met earlier when she had grabbed Alistair’s arm in distress, strokes the dark hair of the younger brother who had gone missing until Solona and her companions found him for his worried sister. When she catches Solona’s eye, she mouths, “Thank you.” In the Circle, she was told constantly how people are frightened of and hate mages. How if she weren’t safely tucked away there she would have been in constant danger of being torn apart in the streets.

Yet another lie the templars told.

Of course she will help these people. She looks at the Bann, who is standing with his hands clasped behind his back, overseeing this last burst of activity. She wonders if he has a wife in Denerim who does not know that if they fail here she may never see her husband again.

“Bann Teagan?”

Though his face is hard watching his men prepare, there is a soft smile playing around the corners of his lips when he glances at her. “My lady?”

She has never in her life been called, “my lady,” before. She is so distracted that she almost forgets what she wanted to ask. “Do you have any family?”

He seems surprised by her question. “Oh… you mean, am I married? I… no. No, I’ve never had the pleasure. If I did, I’d be lucky to find a woman as lovely as yourself.”

She feels Alistair go still next to her, then turn slowly to face his surrogate uncle.

Unlike when Alistair jokingly flirts with her there is no teasing smirk that allows her to laugh it off. She finds that without it, she has no idea how to react. Perhaps he is not even flirting. Perhaps all the blue sky and fresh air are turning her brain, changing her into one of the sex-obsessed mage heroines of the contraband novels Neria used to somehow procure. She blushes, looking away from him. “Flatter.”

“If I may be so bold, what of you, my lady? Are you married?”

She is even more uncertain how to react now. Though his smile is sweet, maybe he _is_ making fun of her. And not in the way that makes her laugh like Alistair does either. “I’m a mage.” The statement is made as though that is a straightforward answer to the question he has asked.

Although his eyes are twinkling impishly, his smile becomes even softer. “Mages can marry, or so I’m told.”

Oh. Not making fun of her, then.

Yes, he is a combination of sweetness and mischief that reminds her very much of Alistair. Perhaps that is why she suddenly finds the courage to tilt her head, smile, and say, “They can indeed, if the man is brave enough.”

“I can think of several reasons why one would be willing to be so brave.” Though there is nothing _overtly_ suggestive in his tone or words, she finds herself blushing as though he has said something incredibly libertine.

She feels Alistair shift from beside to behind her, stepping so close that she can feel his crossed arms brushing against her back. The mischief on the Bann’s face comes even more clearly to the forefront, though he says nothing else. When she turns and tips her head back to try to see what is passing between him and Alistair, the muscles in Alistair’s jaw are straining, and he’s _glaring_ at the man who he seemed to be getting along with so well only a few hours ago.

“Come on.” His voice is as tight as his clenched jaw. “It’s almost twilight. We should get in place.”


	11. In the Field With Him to Live and Die

It is awful. It is pandemonium. She can smell the metallic tang of blood in the air. It’s everywhere. And the undead just keep coming. At one point Leliana goes down after a hard blow, and she nearly rushes out from behind the barricade she’s been ducking against, despite the stern lecture Alistair gave her before the fighting began about staying to cover and not taking risks, but it turns out she was just faking, and she comes up with a dagger in one hand that slices so deeply through the corpse’s throat that she nearly decapitates him, and then she’s gone. She reappears behind the barricade next to Solona’s, her bow already drawn.

Moments later, for an instant she forgets to fight as she watches Morrigan’s body contort in on itself, bones suddenly jutting out at odd angles. A flurry of bodies passes between them, and when the view clears a bear is standing in her place, enormous paws battering at the oncoming corpses two and three at a time. It isn’t possible. It shouldn’t be possible. This is no magic she has ever heard of in the Circle anywhere but in myths, and she read nearly every book in the library at some point; she would _know_ … She would know, she realizes then, nothing that the Chantry didn’t deem her fit to know. She’s been balancing on the single last beam of belief that if there was anything good she took with her from the Circle it was her prized _education_ —and now that drops out from beneath her too. The scrape of an arrow stings across her cheek, bringing her back to the present with a terrifying jolt. 

When the fighting finally ends, Solona can’t tell which corpses were fighting on which side before they fell, only that there are too many of them. She should have done better. She should have saved more of them. When she sees Lloyd's massive body lying still in the dirt, her stomach heaves, and she doubles over, vomiting. Her fault. It's all her fault, and she _wished this on him_.

And then it gets so much worse. She blames the blood that is everywhere for not noticing sooner. They are all covered in it. They are nearly back to the Chantry when Alistair stumbles and falls to his knees. His face is a greyish white more fit for parchment than skin. When he looks up at her, his eyes are hazy. One hand moves to a space where the scales of his armor lay unevenly, like ruffled feathers, and comes up red and glistening. His eyes move slowly down to his hand and then back up to her face. “Oh,” is all he says.

“ _No!_ ” Her voice echoes through the night, breaking the quiet that follows the tumult of battle with impossible volume. The healing spell pouring out of her isn’t coming fast enough. It isn’t _enough_. Broken ribs, the bloody pulp of tissue, the skin that goes over it all in shreds. How was he even walking? She’s never had to heal a wound like this. And she tapped her mana in the battle, and there’s so little now… She is hardly more than an apprentice. She needs a proper enchanter. Someone who knows what they’re doing. Now, when it matters most, after years of diligent practice of creation magic, she has to accept that the only thing she’s _really_ gifted at is destroying things. Morrigan is no help either, her own mana depleted and her knowledge of healing vague and nearly useless anyway.

She doesn’t remember who carried him into the Chantry, though she supposes it must have been Sten. She doesn’t remember asking for the apothecary, but someone has called for him, though she doesn’t understand that that is who he is when he tries to move past her to where they have laid Alistair on a pew. She actually growls at the man. She has no mana and no weapons, but she will claw out his eyes before she lets him touch Alistair. So he gives the healing drought to Leliana instead, who presses it into her hand gently. She tilts Alistair’s head, opens his mouth, and pours it in herself. She doesn’t remember who took his armor off either, though judging by how she won’t let anyone outside their party near him, it must also have been Sten. She isn't thinking about the fact that this is the first time she's ever seen a man without a shirt on, though it is—how can something so inane matter when she doesn't even know if Alistair will live? All she can see when she looks at him is that wound, screaming at her that she hasn’t done well enough, that she should have done better. That if he dies, it’s her fault. Every so often, when enough mana refills the empty vessel of her body, she pours another wave of healing across his ribs. The flesh slowly knits into an angry red pucker. This wound will scar. If only she’d saved more mana. If only she’d seen how hurt he was sooner. A proper healer wouldn’t have left a scar. Not one like this anyway. At least he’s still breathing. A little color is finally returning to his cheeks. She wonders if blood loss can damage the brain. After all her studying, why doesn’t she know? She knows all about the theory behind how healing magic works. But she doesn’t know if he will wake.

She doesn’t realize he is, in fact, already awake until he mumbles something she can’t quite understand. She leans closer, relief coursing through her strong as the lyrium they gave her for her Harrowing. “…blood matted in your hair.” He brings a hand up to brush it weakly against where her hair is indeed crusted with blood.

She just laughs, unsure what he has actually said, and then looks around at their companions. “Everyone, new rule: you have to actually _tell_ me when you’re wounded _immediately_ after fighting ends. If you don’t,” she glares at Alistair even though she can’t keep the curl of a grin from her lips, “then I’m going to poke and prod entirely more than necessary when I heal you.” She waggles her fingers threateningly at him.

He laughs, cut off by a groan when he moves, then gives her big puppy dog eyes. “No, really, I’ve suffered enough. I’ll be good from now on, I promise.”

By the time the ceremony for the dead is ready to begin, Alistair insists that he is fine. It’s a mercy that the smith Owen is such a genius with repairing armor, because when he gives it back, it’s hardly visible where it was broken. She hoovers beside Alistair throughout the ceremony, hardly listening to the recital of names, of people she didn’t save. When it’s finished, the sun is already bathing the world in bright afternoon light, and that’s when _she_ appears. Isolde. The pretty Orlesian Arlessa inspires a sort of vehement antipathy in Solona. She does _not_ want Teagan to go to the castle alone with her. Maybe the repugnance is because she blames the woman for Alistair’s unhappy childhood. Maybe it’s the fact that she used to fantasize in the Circle about having a family that had loved her enough to fight to keep her, and this selfish fool of a woman reveals herself quickly to be a twisted version of that fantasy. She's sure that the woman's determination to keep her son's magic a secret lies at the heart of whatever is going on here. Whatever the reason for her dislike, she is sure something awful is awaiting Teagan in the castle. It is a mercy that he knows of a secret passage into the place. She only hopes that they will get to him before it is too late. And she wishes Alistair would let them leave him in the Chantry, because she still doesn’t believe he’s really fine, but he will, of course, hear nothing of it.

The first affirmation that her feeling of dread is spot on is Jowan.

In any other life this would seem life a terrible coincidence. But this is not another life; it is hers, and it seems inevitable that she should find him here. With everything that has happened since the night she helped him destroy his phylactery, she has never had the chance to come to terms with his betrayal.

She remembers when Neria was still with them, and the three of them would find a secluded corner free of templars to share whatever forbidden bit of the outside world Neria had illegally obtained. Smutty novels about prurient mages and the templars who could not resist, exotic fruits that no one else at the Circle had ever heard of, salacious songs that had probably never been sung inside those walls before. She remembers how the two of them had teased her mercilessly over the way that the templar Cullen had blushed and stammered every time she spoke to him. Over which of the two of them blushed more. At one point Neria had invented a sort of game where she and Jowan would see who could make up the most graphic, elaborate, terribly dirty scenario and ask Solona if she had fantasized about doing such things with Cullen. There were extra points if she blushed more than usual the next time she spoke to him.

She remembers the time after Neria’s Harrowing, when she hadn’t eaten in days. Jowan took her hand and led her into the dining hall. He sat her down at a table and brought her food to her. He pressed a fork into her hand. “You know,” his voice was soft, sorrowful, “she’d never forgive either one of us if you starved yourself into the grave behind her.”

It has never occurred to her until now that perhaps even that was a lie, that perhaps he knew then already the truth about Neria. About the templars deepest and most cruel betrayal of mages and what it really meant. The mere idea that he might have hits her like another act of treachery. Her fist curls around one of the bars of his cell. “Jowan.”

“Solona?” His voice is hoarse. His face, when he steps forward into the light, is bruised and swollen. Blood flecks his robes.

Her fist clenches tighter yet around the bar. Her anger dissipates in the horrified twist of her stomach at his condition. “Jowan… what have they done to you?”

His voice is bitter. “What they do to all traitors and would-be assassins. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent you to finish me off.”

She cannot leave him there like this… And yet, she cannot have him running around this place either. Because she trusted him once. She would have staked her life once without hesitation, without a thought, that Jowan would _never_ be a blood mage. There had been no space in her imagination where that was even possible. But it had turned out to be so much worse than possible. It had been true.

Now, he tells her everything. Every mistake he’s made since he fled the Circle. And there have been many. Arl Eamon lies unconscious somewhere above them because of this man.

No. Not because of Jowan, not really. Because of Teyrn Loghain.

She cannot trust Jowan. But she will not allow him to be another victim of _that_ vile man either.

“Leliana. Can you open this?”

Alistair shifts beside her. “You can’t be thinking of just letting him go?”

For just a moment, she thinks that it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that Alistair wants her to make all of the hard decisions, but then he gets to second-guess them. She will not fight with him about this, especially not when she can’t stop seeing that image of his face drained of blood and his hand covered in it. She wants his approval. She wants his accord. She meets his eyes steadily, laying bare to him all her fear and uncertainty. “What would you have me do? He has made stupid— _incredibly_ stupid—choices, but he is not the one responsible for _this_. Loghain is.” She reaches out and places a hand on Alistair’s arm. “He was a friend once. If we leave him here, if he even _survives_ , they will make him _Tranquil_.” Her voice drips with horror and disgust. She shoots Jowan a steely look. “And when we let him out, he will run. He will leave. We will _never_ see him again.”

Slowly Alistair nods. “Fine. You’re right.” Even now, even here, a bemused grin flitters across his features. “You’re _always_ right. That’s why you’re the fearless leader.”

For the first time, she feels like she just might be worthy or capable enough to do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has given me kudos, commented, or bookmarked. It makes me feel all warm and squishy that reading this made you guys want to mash a button with a little heart on it! Thank you!


	12. Madness Came on the Wind

Her forehead rests against the cool stone of the entrance hall as she tries to modulate her breathing, tries to slow the pounding of her heart. She has changed her mind. She is _entirely_ the wrong person to be making the really hard decisions. Like this one. This one is too hard.

She goes through her choices. She can kill the abomination, though that option involves murdering a ten-year-old boy. She can let the boy’s mother sacrifice herself to save the boy—the woman does seem willing enough. Or they can go to the Circle of Magi for help. Her efforts to control her breathing fail. She gasps and shudders against the wall, not quite crying, but hovering just on the verge.

She has not cried, not once, not since she lost Neria. She will not cry now.

It isn’t that she wasn’t aware that going back to the Circle was on the itinerary anyway. She knew it would have to be done. It was just that… in her plans, in her anxious imagination, it would be their last stop. And by that point she would have found a way to convince Alistair that he didn’t actually need her help. She would have waited for him in Redcliffe or Denerim. She would not have gone to the Circle. Not ever, ever again.

It may truly not be the best option though. Eamon’s boats, which would have been the quickest way of getting to the Circle from here, have all been burned. No matter how fast they travel, even if there were horses (which there are not; there are horse corpses, but no horses—but then, it isn’t as though she knows how to ride one anyway), who knows what could happen here while they are gone. There may be nothing here to save by the time they get back. And she does not even like Isolde. Perhaps she should just let the woman finish this. Perhaps that would be best.

No. The only person that would be best for is  _Solona_. She is only trying to justify her fear, to keep the iron doors of Kinloch Hold from closing permanently with her on the wrong side of them, and she knows it. There is no sunlight and there are no stars in the Circle. No breezes, no cold streams that make her shriek and laugh when she strips down and tries to wash herself with the frigid water, no fresh growing wildflowers that serve no alchemical purpose, no music. And now that she has tasted these things, she will not survive without them.

But if they do go to the Tower, then the blood of every person who dies here while they are gone is on her hands. It will be her fault. No matter what she chooses, someone will suffer, and it will be her fault.

She can feel Alistair approaching, can hear the whisper of the taint they share. A single tear trickles past her lip, and she can taste it, the salt mixing with the blood splattered across her face. Sweat and blood and tears. She wonders if this is how Alistair would taste if she licked the curve of his neck where it disappears into his armor.

The thought shocks her. She does not know where it came from. It is… inappropriate. The way they flirt, it’s only a game. He is so far out of her league she should not even be capable of forming such seditious ideas.

She doesn’t want him to see her like this. The worried scrunch of Muffin’s face as he presses his warm body against her legs is bad enough. She can’t bear the idea of Alistair’s pity or concern, or, worse yet, him trying to make her talk about what’s wrong. She cannot give words to the unspeakable truth. So she pushes herself away from the wall, draws a deep breath, and pulls back her shoulders. When he steps hesitantly through the door, she has to check herself from reaching out and touching his face, just to assuage the remnants of that panic when she thought he was going to die, to feel warm blood still flowing under his skin. She tells him, all business, that they will go to the Circle for help.

She hopes that the uncertain deaths of the faceless and nameless of Redcliffe will weigh less heavily on her than the deaths of the boy or his mother would. She hopes that the faceless and nameless will not, in fact, have faces or names that she has come to know during their short stay in the village.

 

 

She makes it all the way along the shores of Lake Calenhad with her spine straight and her face serene. She even manages to laugh at most of Alistair’s jokes. She suspects that he’s seen through her enough to be concerned, but she’s certain he has no idea the raging tempest of trepidation she’s harboring. But when the outline of the Tower appears on the horizon, the moon silhouetting it brightly against the dark water around it, her feet freeze, and she cannot convince them to take another calm step forward.

Leliana is talking to her, but she isn’t listening. The sound is pleasantly melodic, but devoid of meaning. She cannot look away from the distant, imposing shape of Kinloch Hold’s tower jutting into the darkened sky. Finally, when Leliana’s voice losses its melodic quality and Solona hears her name being called with alarm, she manages to respond. “What? I’m sorry. It’s just… really cold tonight. And I’m tired.” Only tired doesn’t explain why the air is taking on a singed quality or why the faintest flashes of light and soft crackling sounds are coming from her hands. She hasn’t quite lost control yet, but it’s slipping from her in a way it hasn’t since she was a child.

And suddenly Alistair is there beside her, looking back and forth between her pale face and the Tower. “We should go ahead and set up camp. That’s still a pretty long ways, and it’s already late. We’ll finish this in the morning.”

She doesn’t think their companions quite buy this, but her mask of serenity must be slipping because no one questions him, not even Morrigan who would normally question anything that comes out of Alistair’s mouth on principle. After Alistair has his own tent set up, as usual, he immediately begins helping Solona with hers. But when he reaches to take the last stake that holds the tent down from her, he takes her hands in his instead.

“You know that we’re just here for help, right? For Connor and for the Grey Wardens. You’re a Grey Warden now. They can’t keep you.”

She is overwhelmed. _How does he know?_

Since leaving, she has never spoken a word about the Circle, about what being there was or wasn’t like, about the idea of going back, not to anyone. It is as though he has divined the reason for her strange behavior from the very air around her and has given her the only words that could possibly have comforted her right now.

When her eyes meet the warm amber of his, she knows how he knows. It’s because what she is feeling is exactly what he would feel it they were to return to the Chantry where he lived as a child. They are, the two of them, equal opposite halves of some unexpected whole.

Without another word, he releases her and takes the wooden stakes. After he finishes with her tent, he digs around in his pack for a moment, then straightens. In his hand is the rose that she has seen him twiddling with before. He waves it toward her. “Here, look at this. Do you know what this is?”

She hesitates a second. Though she can still feel the terrible sway of the Tower leering over her, Alistair’s words of comfort are trickling inside and filling up some of the spaces whittled away by her fear. So she manages a smile for him. “Your new weapon of choice?”

“Yes, that’s right. Watch as I thrash our enemies with the mighty power of floral arrangements! Feel my thorns, darkspawn! I will overpower you with my rosy scent!” His absurdity is complete with dramatic fencing and silly voice. And then, suddenly, he just shrugs and says rather seriously, “Or, you know, it could just be a rose. I know that’s pretty dull in comparison.”

Without knowing why, his seriousness makes her anxious. She knows how to deal back witticisms. She doesn’t know what to do with seriousness. “You’ve been thumbing that flower for a while now.”

He does that adorable thing that she’s seen him do a handful of times before—he relinquishes his veneer of cockiness and exposes his uncertainty, head down, golden eyes hesitant through blond lashes. “I picked it in Lothering. I remember thinking, ‘How could something so beautiful exist in a place with so much despair and ugliness?’ I probably should have left it alone, but I couldn’t. The darkspawn would come, and their taint would just destroy it. So I’ve had it ever since.”

This story epitomizes Alistair to her. All his sweetness and all his innocence and curiosity. “That’s a nice sentiment.”

“I thought that I might… give it to you, actually. In a lot of ways, I think the same thing when I look at you.”

She is dumbfounded. A thousand times over the past weeks she’s had to remind herself how stupid the idea that he might ever flirt with her is. Even his blatant words find her stubborn determination that he cannot possibly like her—not _that_ kind of like—a difficult barrier to break through. She flounders for a moment. Finally, with a tremulous smile, she reaches out and accepts his offering, bringing it to her nose. “Thank you, Alistair. That’s a lovely thought.”

“I’m glad you like it. I was just thinking… here I am, doing all this complaining, and you haven’t exactly been having a good time of it yourself. You’ve had none of the good experience of being a Grey Warden since your Joining, not a word of thanks or congratulations. It’s all been death and fighting and tragedy. I thought maybe I could say something. Tell you what a rare and wonderful thing you are to find amongst all this… darkness.”

Everything she has seen since she stepped out of Kinloch Hold and into the fresh air, all the beauty and fascination, has left her insatiable, driven by a desire to cram _everything_ she has missed into every moment. She has been a hollow vortex, desperate to devour anything that might fill her. But now she feels suddenly that she will _burst_ with everything that has bloomed inside of her. She cannot bear for him to say one more word of appreciation. She cannot contain it. She grasps for a way to distract him. “So are we married now?”

He laughs, clearly relieved that she hasn’t shown any sign of disapproval. “Ha! You won’t land me that easily, woman. I know I’m quite the prize, after all. No need to start crying on me or anything.” Again, the cockiness slips; his head dips. “I guess it was, uh, just a stupid impulse. I don’t know, was it the wrong one?”

She hardly knows what to say. That no one in her life, not even Neria or Jowan, has ever made her feel so special, so like she has been seen and acknowledged and appreciated. That no one has ever made her feel so, so _much_. She settles for simply, “No, it wasn’t. Thank you, Alistair.”

“I’m glad you like it. Now… if we could move right on past this awkward, embarrassing stage and get straight to the steamy bits, I’d appreciate it.”

She isn’t sure if he’s joking or not. He’s Alistair, so it must be a joke. She isn’t against sex on principle, but she has no idea how any of it is supposed to work. The very idea that he is suggesting it makes a rush of warmth race through her and pool in her stomach. She is terrified, but perhaps not unwilling. She laughs, the sound even louder than usual, no more sure of whether she herself is joking than she was of him. “Sounds good! Off with the armor then!”

His answering laughter is more nervous than she has ever heard from him. He actually physically takes a step back from her. “Bluff called! Damn! She saw right through me!” His blush starts at the tips of his ears and spreads quickly down across his face.

The blush delights her. It makes her want to run her fingertips across his cheeks. She wonders how far down his chest it spreads. “You’re so cute when you’re bashful.”

He takes another step back with a soft chuckle. “I’ll be… I’ll be standing over here until the blushing stops, just to be, uh, safe. You know how it is.”

She watches him go. When Leliana fills his vacated space, she hardly hears a word the girl says.


	13. On Thy Cold Grey Stones

She shudders as they approach the Circle’s docks. Even Alistair’s hand on the small of her back can do nothing to soothe her frayed nerves. His words last night had calmed her, but every step this morning has rubbed away another bit of her serenity. She has the unreasonable urge to plant her feet and start screaming.

“Do all Circles _feel_ like this?” There is a look of curiosity on Morrigan’s face. “One would think that the Veil would be reinforced like a vault door, not…” She gestures vaguely.

Solona’s feet stop moving. “What do you mean?”

“I know you lived here for a long time, but surely you can _feel_ it? You’re a mage of no weak or tenuous connection to the Fade. The Veil is… practically fluttering about us in shreds.”

“You mean… that’s not just me?”

On Morrigan’s face is a look of bewilderment. “You’re _that_ upset about being here that you thought _this_ ” the gesture again, “was just _you_? Why did you stay here for so many years if you find the place so distressing?”

Without bothering to try to answer—really, there _is_ no answer that Morrigan would understand—she takes off at a run for the dock. Where she expects the ferryman Kester there is only a vaguely familiar templar. Carey or Carl or something. In any case, he’s definitely _not_ the Queen of Antiva. She is in no mood for his humor. It snaps something inside of her. She later has only a vague memory of threatening him to make him take them across the lake. She isn’t entirely sure _what_ she threatened him with. The closer they get, the more her head swims with the _wrong, wrong, wrongness_.

The memory of her conversation with Knight-Commander Greagoir is even blurrier, but she knows that when she heard the words, “Rite of Annulment,” the temperature dropped so fast that the condensation in the air began to crystalize. She remembers that terrifying feeling of compression, like a deep breath being drawn before her, just like after destroying Jowan’s phylactery, and bracing for the Smite. Instead, there was Alistair’s voice, harder than his sword, close beside her. “ _That_ would be a _very_ bad idea. Because if you Smite her, the mabari over there and I are going to have a contest to see who can tear you from limb to limb first. And the bard is kind of competitive, so she’ll want a go too. And then that big, grumpy guy and the little scary, half-dressed one there will likely join in because Solona is pretty much the only person either of them have ever shown any sign of maybe, possibly, liking. So, your choice, really. But I’m told I’m not exactly the brains of this little party, and even I can tell you how stupid that would be.”

And just like that, she slips back into the present and regains enough control to lock the ice inside her chest and talk the Knight-Commander into letting them inside to look for survivors. They haven’t gone far when they come across Petra and an older mage who she knows by face but not name—she was at the Magi Encampment at Ostagar where Solona did not stop or linger—guarding  a handful of children. Being only a few years younger than Petra, she knows her rather well. When she was twelve, Petra had once found some contraband item of Neria’s and turned it in. Neria had never forgotten or forgiven. Solona thinks now how stupid it all is, the petty hatreds that fester in this place.

And now so many are dead, mages and templars alike. She can feel the heavy presence of death wafting in the Veil-thinned air. A dozen faces flash through her mind, smeared with blood and contorted with fear in her imagination. Keili, always in prayer, always trying so hard to atone for her magic, as though it were a sin, but who had sung the Chant so beautifully. Ferand, who could do the most spot on impersonations of all the Senior Enchanters. Anders, crazy Anders, with that smile that drove all the girls (and boys, for that matter) crazy, who had managed to escape the Tower five times, though he’d always been hauled back in eventually, eyes a little wilder every time. Bran, the templar who used to guard the main doors. He always kept hard sugar treats in his pockets, and he had given them out freely with a grin and a wink and a quietly muttered, “Shh,” even though mages were only ever supposed to receive Chantry-approved treats, and those rarely. Soft spoken Drass, who was the only templar she’d ever seen willingly pick up a crying mage child and comfort him. Cullen. Golden Cullen who had taken off his metal gauntlets and wiped the tears from her cheeks with warm fingertips in the Chantry the night after Neria’s Harrowing and then had stayed and sung the Chant with her.

She prays they are still here, still waiting to be saved. The older mage, Wynne, wants to save the innocent too. She wonders if they are fools to think there’s anyone left whole and sane and _innocent_ in all this tattered madness.

 

 

She does not know what she is hoping for when they approach the storeroom. She wonders what finding out the truth about Neria would have been like if it hadn’t come on the heels of Jowan’s plea for her help. She has not allowed herself to think about this, this reason that the Circle, perhaps a restrictive but not an unhappy childhood home, has become a place too dark and terrible to even contemplate. The unspeakable truth she will not give voice to even in the silence of her mind.

After a year of thinking the sister of her heart, the only person she had ever loved, who would ever love her, was dead, to see the girl standing before Solona so calmly had been like… She read a book about the tides of the ocean and the waves it makes once. The feeling inside her was like that—like everything pulling back into one instant of joy before she broke and became a thing of fury. The memory is made up of disjointed images. The ugly brand on Neria’s forehead. The horrible, unbearable serenity on a face that always wore wicked smiles and mischief. The templars had done this to her, had severed her not just from the Fade but from her very self. And they had lied to Solona about it, told her Neria was dead. They had done this. And Irving had known. Had allowed it.

But her Neria _was_ dead, wasn’t she? She was dead, and this awful thing wore her face, and it was no different from possession. She hated them, the templars who took Neria from her, who lied to her. Even the ones who had had no part in the act itself, she hated them for knowing. Even kind, gentle Cullen who sang the Chant in a honeyed voice sweet enough for the Golden City and looked at her from the corner of his eye, his face turned half away.

But here in the Circle there is no honeyed sweetness that does not turn to bitter ash. So when Jowan asked for her help, all she could think was that she would not let them have him too.

Now she does not know what she hopes to find. Neria’s body, finally as empty of life as it is empty of Neria herself? Or that calm mask that is not truly Neria huddled in a corner with other Tranquil? The closer they get to the storeroom, the slower she moves, turning over every flaxen haired corpse to check the face, even though she knows the ones without delicate pointed ears and slender elven bodies can’t be her. But when she finally sees the girl lying still twenty paces ahead, she does not have to go closer, does not have to turn the body. Because that body is a piece of every one of Solona’s happy memories in this place, and there is no forgetting and no mistaking. She throws out an arm suddenly, stopping her companions in their tracks. “Wait here.” Her voice is surprisingly steady. It is a voice of command. Even Muffin obeys. And she walks like a commander, does not fall to the ground and crawl to the girl’s side even though it is how she progresses inside her head. She takes slow, even steps that move her forward until she kneels and gently gathers the girl in her arms, rocking her as though she is a infant being sung a lullaby. When the keening noise begins to escape her and she cannot stop it, she can at least modulate it, make it something better than a wordless whimpering. She sings Neria’s favorite song. Certainly not anything from the Chant. And not one of the bawdy ballads like most Neria delighted in learning. It was a mournful madrigal about a mage who wove tapestries that told the future. Having predicted her own death, the king had her locked away to protect her—or to protect his access to her prophetic images. But she had fallen in love with a passing knight while looking out her window and escaped to follow him, leading to the death the thread had predicted for her. When her voice dies away, there is no miraculous sense of peace or closure. But she will not leave Neria’s body to be used against her again. No one will ever walk with her face again. She turns to her companions, who are waiting, still, where she halted them.

“Alistair?”

Her voice is barely audible, but he moves forward immediately until he’s kneeling next to her, gloved hand ghosting coolly over her cheek. “I need a funeral pyre.”

For an instant she can see the urgency of everything else they need to do in his eyes, and then they drift down to the face of the girl in her arms. “Of course.”

Leliana offers the use of some kind of accelerant, and after a silent half hour watching the flames devour the dearest thing in the world to her, Solona’s chin raises defiantly. Because now she has somewhere to direct all the fury she could not unleash on the templars. And it may not be Uldred’s fault that Neria was made Tranquil, and the very fact that that is the fate that awaits unruly mages may even be a factor in his turning so many to blood magic, but he will pay. He will pay because it is people like him that make things like Tranquility and locking mages away from the world an acceptable measure to everyone else. Who can argue against Circles and templars and the things they do when there are mages like Uldred? Neria was _nothing_ like Uldred, and she paid _his_ price. Now, he will pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I had double posted a chapter _weeks ago_. How embarrassing. Suggestions for improvement are always welcome (even just, you know, "Hey, daft girl, you've double posted a chapter!").
> 
> I'm doubly flattered by all the pressing of the little heart button now that I realize I had a chapter double posted for weeks. You guys are sweet.


	14. I Would Fain Know What She Hath Deserved

The Fade is excruciating. Saying goodbye to Neria has already taken so much out of her. She _needs_ to save the Tower. Now. Before Greagoir gets his Rite of Annulment. Before one more person succumbs to the blood mages only a little ways above her now sleeping body. She needs to make them pay.

She needs this all to stop. But it just goes on and on. And she’s alone. She’s never fought alone before. Miraculously, she does not fall. She keeps moving forward. Past Dream Duncan, who she hadn’t realized she thought of as a sort of sacred hero until she sees him there in that Fade vision of Weisshaupt. But he isn’t really Duncan who saved her. So she freezes the life from his dream veins and keeps going.

When she finds Wynne, she feels an aching sympathy for the woman. She knows what it is to be relied upon, to fear what will happen to everyone around you if you falter or fail. It’s a burden she bears too. And so she manages to pull her from the haze, to convince her of the deceit she’s succumbed to. Though fat lot of good it does when the woman just disappears. Damned Fade.

Leliana is harder, but in all her chattering she has reveled enough of herself to Solona for her to find her way through the trap Sloth has set for her. Leliana is absolute in her rejection of the idea that the Maker has turned from his creations. And so she is freed from her Fade prison as well. And disappears as well.

Morrigan is simply waiting in boredom for Solona to help rid her of the spirit posing as her mother. Clever girl. Of course she wasn’t fooled.

Sten is… confusing. After a somewhat circular conversation typical of the huge man, he admits that he is already aware that they are stuck in a dream. As ever, he boggles her.

Muffin is difficult to wake, but as always ecstatic to see her when he does.

And then Alistair. He seems so happy. Happy here, happy to see her. It breaks her heart to have to disrupt his fantasy. She feels as though she is taking his family from him all over again. But what choice does she have? She can’t just leave him here. She can’t just let the Sloth demon have him.

By the time they leave the Fade, she feels as though all the battling should be over. She is more drained that she has ever felt. The Circle is scavenging her soul, picking away pieces of her that she won’t get back. How much more before this place proves Alistair wrong when he said they couldn’t keep her? How much more before it has picked away so many pieces that there’s nothing left of her to leave this place?

It is what they find just before the final stair to the Harrowing Chamber at the top of the Tower that nearly undoes everything left of her. Even through the wavering haze of the prison he is trapped in, she would recognize that bowed head anywhere, no matter that she’s never before seen the blond curls that are normally brushed into submission coiling wildly around his face. She runs forward, hands pushing against the shimmering barrier even though it might have been electric. It isn’t. Nor does it budge when she beats her fists against it. “Cullen!”

He is praying, and it takes a moment for him to look up. When his eyes raise to meet hers there is no softness, no warmth, no recognition. Only disgust, and beneath that fear. “This trick again? I know what you are. It won’t work. I will stay strong…”

Her fists flatten into palms against the barrier. “Cullen?” Her voice is soft, uncertain. “Don’t you recognize me?”

His black grimace darkens into an expression she has never seen on his soft, blushing face before. “Only too well… how far they must have delved into my thoughts…”

Her companions are speaking but it’s outside the range of her attention. All she hears is Cullen’s plea that they just kill him already. She sinks down to her knees so that their faces are level, palms sliding with her along the barrier as though it might disintegrate and allow her to press her hand to his hollowed, bruised cheek. “Cullen.” It is a whisper so soft she doesn’t know if even he hears her, but his eyes shift back to her face, all the warm brown burned out into fathomless darkness.

“Sifting through my thoughts… tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have…” His eyes move bitterly to her breasts, and she feels his gaze like a hand wrapped around her throat, cutting off all air in painful rush of humiliation and guilt. This is not Cullen. It isn’t until that moment that she realizes she thought of him as “her” Cullen once, because all she knows now is that this is _not_ her Cullen. It is also then that she realizes that, had he been repentant, she might have forgiven him for knowing about Neria. From _him_ , she might have believed that the lie was told to protect her from pain.

But all of that is gone. His eyes move back to her face and his lips curl. “Using my shame against me… my ill-advised infatuation with her… a mage, of all things!”

He says he hasn’t broken, but he’s wrong. She can see it in the hatred that burns black, tamping out all the gold in his irises. The templars took Neria from her and the blood mages have taken Cullen. The cycle goes on and on. But _this_ cycle, this one repetition, she will end here, now.

Even when he realizes she is real, there is still none of his familiar stuttering embarrassment. When he asks how she got here, she rises to her feet again. “I defeated everything in my way. Now it’s Uldred’s turn.” She feels the ice crystalizing inside her, making her stronger, harder.

And then they share what she is sure will be the last meaningful look to ever pass between them. The last time they will share a resolve, the last time they will be two people who have ever shared anything.

It lasts until he insists that everyone left alive should pay along with Uldred, and she feels everything that ever lay between them being extinguished. Yes, _her_ Cullen is gone. Uldred will pay for that too.

 

 

He does pay. She is straddling Uldred’s chest. Her hands, blazing with electricity, are wrapped around his throat, her staff forgotten, and she does not realize it is all over until Alistair’s voice makes it through the sound of her own unrelenting scream of rage. He’s squatting before her, face worried, unable to reach out and touch her with electricity dancing along her skin.

“Solona. Solona. Come back to me. It’s over now. Come back.” His voice is quiet and steady, and she doesn’t know how long he’s been there, talking to her like this, but she suspects it’s been a couple of minutes. Given that Cullen is now standing in the doorway staring at her with an expression she can only name as terrified awe, she supposes Uldred must have been dead for a while now, as she is sure the cage was his, that it did not dissolve and allow Cullen to make his way up the stairs until she rendered the last shred of life from him.

Muffin is cowering behind, of all people, Morrigan. Leliana and Wynne are both kneeling in prayer. Irving is… she doesn’t care what the old man is doing. Her eyes move back to Alistair.

There are tears on her cheeks. She can feel the river of them dripping all the way down to her throat, wetness at the collar of the tunic she wears beneath her armor. Aside from the single tear at Redcliffe, she has not cried since Neria left her. The scream finally silenced, she gasps for breath.

Alistair gives a relieved exhale. “There. Good. It’s okay.” He holds his arms out to her, but doesn’t close the space between them, giving her the opportunity to reject the comfort he’s trying to offer if it’s not what she wants right now.

But it is. She launches herself at him so hard that he falls backward off his toes, lands on his butt, and barely manages to stay upright at that. Once he’s steadied himself, he pulls her more fully into his lap and wraps his arms tight around her. “There, there. It’s okay now. You were amazing. You _are_ amazing. You’re okay now. And we’re going to leave. All of us. There’ll be stars and sunshine. I’ll find you anything you want.” His mouth is near her ear, the gentle stream of his words meant only for her, for her comfort, but when she shifts her head against his neck and catches Cullen still there watching, she wonders if he can hear too.

It doesn’t matter anymore. Alistair and the others, Muffin and Leliana and Morrigan and Sten, and now Wynne, they matter. Being a Grey Warden matters. Stopping the Blight matters. But there is nothing left in Kinloch Hold that matters anymore.


	15. What a Great Heap of Grief

By late afternoon, they’ve made it back to the place where they camped the night before. Solona considers stopping. All she wants is to sleep, but not here. Not where she can still see the Tower on the horizon. So they walk on. She’s glad Bodahn and Sandal stayed in Redcliffe.

At some point she finds herself next to Sten. His stoicism makes her ashamed of all the feelings still thrumming tempestuously through her. Ashamed of how she slipped out of reality when she realized what was happening to the only home she ever remembers having. “I’m… um, sorry. About earlier.”

“Your apology is accepted.” He is quiet for a moment, and she doesn’t realize that he is studying her until she looks up. “You judge yourself harshly. And yet you did not act carelessly or foolishly. You did not dishonor yourself. And that is… commendable. When something that defines you is lost or threatened, it is… it requires great willpower to act honorably.”

And that’s when he tells her about his sword. About what defines _him_. How a warrior’s sword is a part of him, an essential component of who he is. Qunari names are titles, and without his sword, he is no warrior of the Beresaad. He is not Sten. He is nothing. He tells her what he did when he woke without it. Of his great shame and dishonor.

It is… soothing to listen to him. It is not a happy story, and it does not bring her peace, but it carves out a hollow in all of her feelings that are swirling around her and gives her something outside herself to contemplate. And it gives her another goal. Another action that must be completed, another verse for her litany. Another thing that is so beyond her, it ought to be impossible, and yet she will do it. She promises him she will find his sword. So it will be done. Because she's _promised_.

How steep this cliff she’s climbing is. How very far she’s giving herself to fall.

 

 

When they finally halt, the Tower no longer visible behind them, the ache of exhaustion is pounding through Solona in a way she has never felt before. But she does not retreat to her tent to sleep. She is terrified. That things wait for her there, while all her defenses lay in ruins. So she sits silently in front of the fire, arms around herself, cold despite her proximity to the flames.

“Maker, Solona, you’re trembling.” Alistair’s body is suddenly there beside her, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her in close. She’s glad Sten is lookout now, because it means Alistair has shed his armor. His body is warm through the linen of his shirt. She tries to hold herself stiffly away from him. But he’s strong. And so warm. And sweet. And he smells like burning wood and dewey grass and something else, something… _Alistair_.

“Do you… do you want to talk about it?”

No. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to think about it. Because if she really thinks about it, she’s going to have to face just how stupid it is that she wants nothing more than to bury her face in Alistair’s chest. However badly it hurt, Cullen spoke the truth. She is a shameful thing. She is a sin.

What terrifies her most, what makes sitting here against Alistair so stupid, is that, in the space of weeks, he has woven himself more intricately into her heart than Cullen ever did, after more than a year of blushing looks and shy smiles. And if Cullen had the power to hurt her like he did, then what of her heart when Alistair realizes how damnable it is to indulge a creature like her? He will break her chest wide open and rend her heart into pieces so tiny that nothing will ever repair it.

She should rip him out of her heart now, while it will only leave a gaping hole, before he is so entangled he takes the whole thing with him.

She cannot bring herself to pull away, so she just whispers, face turned away from him, “You shouldn’t be so kind to me.”

“ _I_ shouldn’t be so kind to _you_? You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re kind to the nasty, feral apostate, the completely mad, delusional Chantry sister, and the murderous, terrifying Qunari. And you think _I_ should be less kind to _you_?”

She doesn’t answer. After a long pause, he asks, haltingly, “That templar… were you… was he…?”

There’s an embarrassed anxiety to the question that she thinks is jealousy. He thinks she’s a rare and wondrous thing, and he likes her enough to be _jealous_ of Cullen. He is so sweet. Maker help her. He is too sweet and innocent for the shame of her magic. It is her curse. It will take him from her sooner or later, as it has taken everything from her since the day she was carried away from her screaming mother.

“What should the affections of a _mage_ matter to a sweet Chantry boy like you?”

“Don’t.” His voice is angry. She wonders if he’s offended by being called a Chantry boy, but she doesn’t turn to face his wrath. His fingers are firm on her chin, turning her anyway, even though she won’t, towards his eyes, gold, defensive, hard as aurum. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you _dare_ believe the vitriol spewed from the twisted mind of a tortured man. The world is _full_ of despicable, vicious people. Maker, the world contains _Loghain_. And you think that because you can touch the Fade, _you’re_ wicked? You throw yourself into danger to protect others. You will take the difficult path, without regard to the cost to yourself, if you think it means you can save someone, can do some good. If being as irresistible to the Fade as you are here were something you needed to apologize for, which it’s _not_ , you would have earned your pardon twice over by now.” And then, because he _does_ know her, he knows exactly how she thinks and how she sees the world, he finds the flaw that crumbles her argument. “What about Morrigan? Don’t get me wrong, _I_ think _she_ could use some time spent seeking pardon for… a lot of things. And I’m not certain _she_ isn’t wicked. But that’s entirely because she's _herself_ and not because she’s a mage… Maker, I’m bungling this, but what I’m saying is, _you_ don’t think Morrigan is evil. _You_ don’t believe that Morrigan should be locked away or treated cruelly just because she is a mage. So _why_ would you _ever_ believe that _you_ should be?”

There is a lump in her throat, but she cannot turn away, and it’s not his fingers caging her face making her unable. Her voice is a broken whisper. “Alistair, you’re going to break my heart.”

His face softens from determined displeasure to sincerity. He shakes his head slowly. Though calm and steady, his whisper is as fragile as hers. “Solona, I would defend your heart unto death.”

She doesn’t know if that’s a promise he _can_ keep, but it drains the rest of her will to resist him. Her body relaxes against his, and after a while she falls asleep feeling safer than she thought possible tonight, tucked against his warmth.

 

 

As they walk, Alistair and Leliana hoover around her, chattering too brightly, watching her too closely. Though she knows they mean well, they’re only calling her attention back to the thing she wants to ignore. So she slips away from them, hurrying along the path to catch up with Morrigan.

“Hey. That thing you did at Redcliffe. When you turned into a bear…”

“Ah, curious about the magic your Chantry insists does not exist?” Morrigan’s smile, when she glances at her, has less condescension than she expects. It is, in fact, almost genuinely friendly.

“It was…” She hesitates thinking of the words that most of the mages in the Circle would use. Disturbing. Unnatural. Painful looking. She isn’t a Circle mage bound to the Chantry anymore though. She can choose any word she wants, and the one she chooses comes out with a bubble of delighted laughter that does more to release her from the grip of yesterday’s events than anything else has. “It was _amazing_. Can you take other forms? How did you learn? Can you—could you teach me?” The questions come rapidly, one on top of the other, and she’s a little afraid her enthusiasm might put Morrigan off, but the witch just gives her an amused smile.

“Perhaps you could learn what you wish if you gave me long enough to answer before asking the next question.”

Morrigan tells her about shape shifting. But she isn’t just telling Solona about taking the shape of an animal. She’s telling her about her childhood. About the solitude: about the beauty of solitude and also the ache of it. About the comfort of the alien and inhuman; about how the most opulent treasure is knowledge on the brink of being forgotten. Morrigan gives her the strangest instructions, most of which involve more observation and focus and imagination than any practical magical instruction she’s ever received.

“Don’t be impatient. Aside from raw magical ability, shape shifting requires nothing so much as patience and peace. For a while you will try. It will not work. And then, simply, it will.”


	16. What Is All This Sweet Work Worth

Back at Redcliffe Castle, she must step back into the Fade. She could send Morrigan or Wynne or even Irving. Some still bitter part of her thinks he might deserve that, even though she knows that he is a man with tenuous power doing his best to protect those who he can. But he could not protect Neria. And he let Jowan feel so hopeless that he turned to blood magic in his desperation. In the end the reason she volunteers herself is because of the look on Alistair’s face. This is the closest thing to family he has—except for the sister he’s never met. He asked her on the way here if they could maybe call on her if they found themselves in Denerim. She knows now how much family means to him. So she goes into the Fade herself because no one else will be thinking of Alistair first in there. No one but her.

After everything, it is almost easy, and that frightens her. Oh, the things a Pride demon could do with that arrogance. When she steps from the Fade, jerking awake, it is Alistair who catches her shoulders.

They hold a banquet in her honor that night. All the fighting so far almost feels worth it, watching Alistair drink heartily—quite a lot of mead, actually—laughing and smiling at everything. Though Arl Eamon still lies unconscious in his bed, Alistair is confident that they will find the Urn of Sacred Ashes, that these ashes will, with their mystical powers, heal Eamon. He seems to believe there is nothing she can’t do. She wonders how long it will be before she disappoints him.

She surveys the room, trying to find the contentment than seems to have settled over everyone else. Muffin sits so proudly at her side that she thinks he looks more like a regal carving of a Ferelden emblem than a real dog. Wynne is speaking quietly with Irving. She’s actually heard Morrigan laugh once or twice. Even Sten looks almost pleased behind a tower of miniature iced cakes stacked on his plate.

She reaches into her pocket and runs her thumb back and forth across the locket within. She found it in the Arl’s desk. She hadn’t meant to snoop, but she’d needed to make a note before she went into the Fade. For Alistair. Just in case she didn’t come back. And she’d needed a pen and paper, and where more likely to find such than an arl’s desk? The moment she’d set eyes on it, with its spider web of veins where it had been painstakingly repaired, she was sure it is the one that was his mother’s, the one that he had thrown at the wall when Eamon sent him to the Chantry. She hadn’t had a chance to give it to him before. So she’d put it in her pocket with the note where he would find it if she didn’t wake. Now she feels a swell of anticipation. She wants to give it to him now. _There_ will be her contentment. But she doesn’t want to do it in front of everyone. This is just for Alistair.

She gets Leliana instead.

“There you are!” Her accent is more pronounced than usual. It seems that she’s been enjoying the mead rather heavily as well. “This is no Orlesian ball, but it’s quite nice, no? A reprieve from all the fighting? And look at the shoes the Arlessa let me borrow! _These_ are Orlesian shoes at their finest! So beautiful, no?”

She holds out her leg and lifts the skirts of her borrowed gown a few inches to reveal the emerald satin pumps with a bow at the needle-like heel. Solona wonders how she can walk in them sober, much less after a half dozen goblets of mead.

Alistair lets out a particularly vociferous roar of laughter, and she looks up, curious what Bann Teagan has said down at the other end of the table to make him laugh so. When he catches her looking, the laugh dies on his lips. After a moment she realizes the two of them are staring at each other rather stupidly and looks away quickly.

“Alistair is quite fond of you, isn’t he?” Leliana’s fingers are tracing some invisible image in the tablecloth.

She thinks about the rose hidden in her pack. “He is?” She means it to be a statement, but it comes out as a question. No matter how much his words reverberate in her head, she cannot stop questioning that _he_ could feel that way about _her_.

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s obvious. He’s not very good at being subtle. I like Alistair… I don’t know if there’s anyone who doesn’t, but I… I was wondering if there was something more between you two.”

She draws in a breath slowly. She thinks she and Leliana are becoming friends, and she has wanted one of those so badly since she lost Neria, and this question somehow feels… loaded. “I… think so. I do like him.”

“Oh…” Leliana’s hands leave the table and fall into her lap. “I… I see… Well, he’s a very nice boy, no? If you… if you hadn’t made your move, perhaps I would have.”

This surprises her. Leliana and Alistair certainly get along better with each other than with Morrigan or Sten, but she’s never thought Leliana was looking at Alistair… well, the way she herself was. “Really?”

“Maybe. I…” She seems as uncertain about this as Solona. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m happy for the both of you. And especially for him. He couldn’t have found a better companion.”

But perhaps she _did_ like Alistair like that, because she looks sad when she walks away and gets yet another goblet of mead.

Alistair fills the chair she’s vacated, plopping with decidedly less grace than usual, a goblet of mead in each hand. She wonders how many he’s already had. She can smell it, sweet and not unpleasant, when he leans towards her to speak. “Mead is fantastic, you know. So I brought you some. Because you are fantastic. Like mead. But probably even better.” He offers her one of the goblets and she accepts.

She laughs, wondering if he is drunk enough to even remember this conversation in the morning. She twists the goblet in her hands and bats her eyes at him. “Probably better than mead? Alistair of the silver tongue, you charmer.”

Something in his eyes tells her he grasps the challenge that, whether she really meant it or not, has been issued—and he accepts. He raises his goblet slightly toward her, his smile suddenly that cocky grin that makes her insides go quivery. “You’re certainly lovelier than anything I’ve ever seen. You smell nicer than anything I’ve ever smelled. Your laugh is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard… Of course you would taste sweeter than anything I’ve ever tasted and feel more exquisite than anything I’ve ever touched. My mistake if I seemed uncertain, my lady.”

Perhaps the ability to suddenly turn on dazzling charm even in the midst of inebriation is something inherited from his father. It seems like it a useful trait for a king, but it’s not something she particularly expected from Alistair, sweetly fumbling as he usually is.

Because her cheeks are burning and she has no idea what to say in response to a compliment that is, simply, too much for her, and she doesn’t know why he called her, “my lady,” in the same tone as Teagan when he never has before, she blurts out entirely the wrong thing. “Am I really allowed to drink mead?”

He obviously hadn’t noticed that she’d only been drinking water until now. His charming smirk dissolves into confusion. “Why wouldn’t you be allowed to have mead? And who has the right to allow or disallow you—“ His eyes focus on her then with more clarity than she expects, which is awful, because with it comes frustration. “Is this a mage and templar thing? Are _you_ seriously _asking_ ** _me_** if you’re allowed mead? And aren’t mages actually allowed mead anyway?”

She cannot look at him. “Not apprentices.” How could she have asked such a stupid question? He gave her the best compliment she’d ever heard, and she went and said the one thing he would actually find offensive.

“You aren’t an apprentice. And even if you were, I am _definitely_ ** _not_ ** a templar.” His voice is flat.

Because she has no idea what else to do, she brings her goblet to her lips and does not remove it until it’s empty. It’s less bitter than she expects. It tastes like honey and sunshine. She considers apologizing, but she suspects that would only irritate him more, so instead of saying anything at all she forces herself to meet his gaze, face flushed first with embarrassment and then slowly from the mead.

He just looks at her for a long moment before finishing his own goblet off, and when he puts it down he smiles at her. “Hey, I want to show you something.” He stands and offers her his hand. “Come with me.”

Flooded with an entirely out of proportion delight that he isn’t angry at her, she takes his hand immediately. When she stands, she’s glad his hand is there to steady her against the unfamiliar weight of alcohol in her blood.

When Muffin tries to nose between them, Alistair says, very innocently, as if to no one in particular, “You know, I think Morrigan has a couple of Mabari Crunches hidden in her skirt.” After the hound bounds off, he gives her his most self-satisfied smirk, plainly well pleased with his own cleverness.

Alistair leads her over to a side door, where he grabs a candle from its holder, and then out into the cold night air. They lean against each other unsteadily as they cross the yard toward the stable, giggling at nothing more than the sound of each others’ laughter. Inside the stables, it smells of clean hay. There are still no horses to replace the ones slaughtered, so the warm, horsey-smell is faint, the hay almost vanilla-like in its fresh sweetness. Solona still remembers these smells, after all these years, and for an instant her last hours before the templars came for her come back to her clearer than ever. She can almost see her mother’s face before it fades away again.

“Aaaand up.” Alistair is pointing to a wooden ladder leading up into darkness.

“Um… I don’t know if you can make it.”

“What?! I’m definitely more sober than you. You are a girl. I can hold my liquor like a man.” He leans unsteadily into her, rather proving her point.

She just raises an eyebrow. “Is that so? Well, if you do fall, just don’t cry too hard while I’m trying to concentrate on casting a healing spell. It’s distracting.”

She feels awkward going first, all fumbling bum. At the top, moonlight pours down on the space to reveal… a bedroom? Along one wall is a desk and what must have once been a bed, the wooden frame still standing, a few frayed bits of rope and old strands of straw stuck to it. Opposite the bed a slim bookshelf stands, and in the center of the room is an empty, tarnished bronze fire bowl. Warm light slowly begins to shed itself across the room as Alistair makes his way up the ladder with the candle. At the top, she helps pull him up, legitimately concerned what a fall from this height might do to him. When he is finally upright and surprisingly steady—maybe he isn’t as drunk as she thought—he turns in a slow circle and then squats in front of the bookshelf, a look of wonder on his face as he reaches for one of the small wooden figurines lined up across it in front of the books. “They’re still here. I was sure she would have gotten rid of everything… Or given it to Connor. I thought someone else would sleep here now. One of the stable hands.”

She steps closer to look over his shoulder at the intricately carved little knight as Alistair gently brushes away the dust. “Was this… was this your room?” Not that it’s exactly a room.

He chuckles and moves back to seat himself on the edge of the desk. “My room? No, it was my kennel. I was raised by dogs, remember?”

She hesitates for a moment, suddenly unsure of what she wants to say when she gives him the locket. She had thought finding it in the arl’s desk must have meant something, that the man cared for Alistair in a way that he was afraid he had not been cared for, and it is obvious to her that he desperately wants for that to be the case. But… this is where Eamon raised the King’s son? Even with a fire in the bowl, it must have been frigid in the winter. She is truly flummoxed by the man, and without him conscious to judge by, she cannot guess what kind of man he is. Finally she pulls the locket from her robes. What Alistair believes is, in the end, more important to her than whatever the incomprehensible, unconscious man in the castle actually ever thought or felt. “I think I found something of yours.”

He accepts it slowly, eyes darting to hers in shock. “This… this is my mother’s amulet. It has to be. But why isn’t it broken? Where did you find it?”

“In the arl’s study. I was only looking for a pen and some paper… It was in his desk.”

“Oh. The arl’s study? Then he must have… found the amulet after I threw it at the wall. And he repaired it and kept it? I don’t understand, why would he do that?”

She wonders if he’s even really talking to her. Maybe she should just leave him alone now. But she was raised in the Circle. Surrounded by children who didn’t remember their parents’ faces—like herself—or worse, those who did remember them, twisted with fury or disgust. She understands what it means to want to believe you have been loved. Her voice is soft. “Perhaps you mean more to him than you think.”

“I… guess you could be right. We never really talked that much, and then the way I left…” When his golden eyes meet hers, she doesn’t feel like an intruder. She feels… adored. “Thank you. I mean it. I… thought I’d lost this to my own stupidity. I’ll need to talk to him about this if he recovers from his… _when_ he recovers, that is. I wish I’d had this a long time ago.” His expression suddenly takes on a look of surprise. “Did you remember me mentioning it? Wow. I’m more used to people not really listening when I go on about things.”

“Of course I remembered. You’re special to me.”

His grin is brilliant as staring into the sun. “Is this the part where the music starts and we begin dancing? Because I’m game. Where’s the minstrels?”

Before he can completely turn the moment, she presses on. “One other thing. About this being your kennel. I was lying before when I said that being raised by dogs explained the smell, you know.”

“Oh, really?” One brow is raised and his eyes are gleaming, expecting banter, already trying to guess where she’s going with this and prepare a comeback.

“You don’t smell like a dog.” She is moving slowly toward him as she speaks. His gaze becomes more intense with every step, until it seems to have solidified into something she can feel against her skin. “You smell like…” She pauses when her feet are between his and leans close, so close that she can feel his stubble against her cheek, a whispered scratch that is the spark that ignites her. She’s a mage, she reminds herself. She knows how to play with fire. She can do this. “…Alistair.” When she speaks his name, her lips brush against his skin.

She waits just a moment to see if he’s going to reach for her chin, if he’s going to tilt her face and kiss her. And then she gathers herself, turns, and walks away. She won’t make a _complete_ fool of herself if he doesn’t want what she’s offering. She takes another figure from the shelf and blows on it to remove the dust, trying not to feel like the stupidest girl to ever live. Has she misunderstood everything? Was that whole thing with the flower really just his way of saying that she is a good friend? Does he not want to kiss her? She looks down at the figurine, trying to distract herself before she does something a thousand times more embarrassing, like cry. It has a sword in one hand and… is that a staff in the other? “Is this one a mage?”

For a moment he just sits there, perfectly still. And then his head moves slowly as though he’s shaking off a daze. Leaving the candle on the desk, he walks over to her to look down at the figure, then grins. “It is. That’s Knight Enchanter Esmerelda, the fiercest and most beautiful mage in all of Thedas. Or at least I thought she was when I was a child. I didn’t know they came even fiercer and more beautiful.” He takes another step closer to her, eyes on the figure. “You might not be able to tell in the dark, but she has red hair.” His voice is uneven.

She shivers a little, hoping he can’t see it in the dark. Hoping he’s going to kiss her. Wishing she’d stop hoping for foolish things that aren’t going to happen.

When he speaks again, his voice is perfectly calm, mildly amused. “So… all this time we’ve spent together… you know, the tragedy, the brushes with death, the constant battles with the whole Blight looming over us… will you miss it once it’s over?”

Instead of bantering back, she just smiles at him. “Must you always joke about such things?”

“Yes! Only one of the old sisters at the monetary used to never laugh at my jokes. No matter how hard I tried, she’d just glare at me and then rap me with her cane.”

She’s can’t help laughing. “Maybe she was deaf.”

“Not a chance. That biddy could hear you close your eyes from around the corner. She just hated me. _Hated_ me.”

After a long moment of giggling she can’t control, she lets out a small sigh as it finally subsides. “But you’re so adorable.”

“I know! That’s what I said!” And then suddenly he is all earnest intensity. “I know… it might sound strange, considering we haven’t known each other for very long, but I’ve come to… care for you. A great deal. I think maybe it’s because we’ve gone through so much together. I don’t know. Or maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I’m fooling myself. Am I? Fooling myself? Or do you think you might ever… feel the same way about me?”

The look on his face is half hopeful, half forlorn. She thinks that he actually _expects_ her to tell him no. He really thinks so lowly of himself that he can’t see how crazy she is about him. It gives her the courage to find her voice. “I think I already do.”

He slides his fingers, roughly calloused but so, so warm, along her cheek until his hand tangles in her hair. “So I fooled you, did I? Good to know.”

It almost breaks her heart that this is his only response to being told that she cares for him, to say he has _fooled_ her. And then his lips meet hers.

For all its chaste sweetness, the kiss still makes her dizzy. It makes her want more. She wants to taste him. She wants to know _exactly_ how sweet he is. She gets the Orlesian kiss in theory, but what is she actually supposed to do now to make it happen? The only sort-of experience she has with it hasn’t prepared her at all for this. She becomes aware of the hand Alistair doesn’t have tangled in her hair waving vaguely up and down, a few inches away from her body. He doesn’t know where to put it. So she leans into him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and his hand finally settles in the middle of her back, pulling her more closely against him. When the kiss finally does change, she isn’t even sure exactly how it happens. One minute they’re shifting awkwardly against each other, then teeth are bumping against lips, and suddenly his tongue is sliding against hers. She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but kiss him back.

When he pulls away, she sighs again, the same sound she uttered after giggling. When her eyes flutter open, he moves the hand from her back around to stroke her cheek. “That… wasn’t too soon, was it?”

She lets out a breathy laugh and looks up at him. “I don’t know. I need more testing to be sure.”

He is already leaning in toward her as he responds, his laugh a flutter of warm air across her cheeks. “Well, I’ll have to arrange that, then, won’t I?” He pauses a breath from her lips. “Maker’s breath, but you’re beautiful. I am a lucky man.” And then, more uncertain, still so close to her lips and not yet touching, “Can you… take down your hair?”

She blinks at him. “My hair?”

He leans closer, past her mouth, and nuzzles her jaw where it meets her ear. “Leliana was playing with it the other night. I wanted to bash her over the head with my shield. I was maybe, possibly, just a teeny bit jealous.”

She has no idea how sensitive her neck is until she feels him nuzzle her there. Just the brush of his nose against her skin does something to her that she has never felt before. She can’t keep herself from making a noise somewhere between a gasp, a sigh, and a moan. She can feel him grin against her skin and then carefully repeat the gesture. Another noise escapes her, and he laughs in a self-satisfied sort of way.

He was jealous. Of _Leliana_. How strange. She moves her hands to unpin her hair without answering him, without pulling away. His breath keeps hitting her neck in warm gusts that make her hands tremble like leaves in a breeze. It takes far longer to work the bits of metal from her hair than it normally does.

She isn’t expecting his tone to have become so hesitant when he speaks again. “You _don’t_ like Leliana, do you? I mean, you know… like her like _this_ kind of like?”

She giggles. “Like Leliana like this? But Leliana is a Chantry sister.”

He lets out a breath in a half chuckle against her neck. “Yes… but that hasn’t kept her from liking _you_ like this.”

And then she freezes, hands suddenly still in her hair. “Leliana… _likes_ me? I thought… I thought she liked _you_?”

“Me? Am I the one that she’s always touching? That she can’t take her eyes off of? That she stares at like a pair of Orlesian shoes?”

“I… Oh.” She pulls back to look at him, concerned. “I didn’t know. I… told her that I like _you_ … You don’t think I hurt her, do you?”

He strokes her cheek again. “As long as she doesn’t start saying that the Maker himself came down and sang her a soliloquy next, I think we can assume she’s handling it.” Again a half-laugh escapes him. “Did you really not know how she felt about you? Maker, I’ve found the only woman in Thedas even more clueless than myself. Remind me never to let you get away.”

She doesn’t dare respond. If he knew just how badly she wants to _keep_ him, he would surely run away from her, shrieking with terror. To her, he is a thousand times brighter than the sun, more glorious to behold than all the stars. He's every good thing she never thought she'd have.

Her hair is finally free, unpinned and unplaited, waving around them, and his hands are buried in it. He turns her so that he can press soft, open mouthed, gently suckling kisses to that spot on her neck that he was nuzzling. The sound she makes is so decidedly _dirty_ that if she weren’t on fire, the flames burning away the shame, she would certainly have been embarrassed by it.

He pauses in his kissing and rests his forehead against her temple, breathing raggedly. His hands untangle from her hair and move to her hips, gently pushing her back a step, separating them just a few inches. “We should… get back.”

“…Oh.” Her voice is laced with disappointment. She doesn’t know much about this kind of thing, but she knows that this isn’t generally how men respond to a kiss like that. She wonders what she did wrong.

He groans. “No. It’s not that… Don’t look at me like that, it isn’t fair. This is already hard enough. It’s because you are… you deserve to be courted by a gentleman. Because you deserve a thousand times better than this—” he laughs and she can’t help thinking there is a tinge of bitterness in it, “—a dusty loft in a freezing stable.”

She looks at him sadly. By “this,” he means the room he grew up in. He means, she thinks, himself. “And does what I _want_ matter less than what _you_ think I deserve?”

He laughs, loud after the murmured quiet of their conversation. “What of _my_ virtue, then? Would you take such advantage of an innocent Chantry boy, wicked temptress that you are?”

She knows what he’s doing, distracting her with humor like he always does. She sighs and bats her eyes at him. “ _If_ I were a wicked temptress, then I would most certainly take _all_ of your advantages from you, Chantry Boy.” And then she laughs lightly, arms unwinding from around his neck. “Your virtue can rest assured that I wouldn’t know how to go about _temptation_ even with a Desire demon whispering instructions in my ear.”

Quietly enough that she doesn’t think he actually meant her to hear it, he mutters, “The Void you wouldn’t.”


	17. For Ever Warm and Still to Be Enjoyed

On the way to her room, she sees a pale face peering at her through a partially closed door and freezes. This is the first time she’s seen the boy, Connor, since she destroyed the demon in the Fade. She is worried for him. How does anyone survive that and just go on as though everything is okay? And even worse, his father is still so ill. All the horror and destruction he brought down in his desire to save his father, and he has saved nothing.

“Hello… You’re Connor, aren’t you?”

The door opens a few more inches. The boy’s head peaks out further as he nods. “Who are you?”

“My name is Solona. I’m… I’m a mage. Like you.”

He jerks back into the room and nearly closes the door. She can just see one eye peering out when it stills. His voice is a frightened whisper. “You know about that? Am I in trouble? Are they coming to take me away?”

Her heart feels as fragile as glass and his words are a fist squeezing much too tightly. In the Circle, in her safe world of creation magic and old books, she would have run away from this feeling. There is a reason Neria and Jowan were her only friends. They—and maybe Cullen—were the only ones who had managed to slip through the arms she held outstretched to keep people away from her heart. Now she takes a step closer, her voice as gentle and soothing as she can make it. “I do know about that. And you aren’t in trouble. Whatever else has happened, you haven’t done anything bad just by _being_ a mage. But… but you are going to have to go and live somewhere else now.” She will not lie to him. But she cannot tell a child the whole truth either. That if he fails again like he failed here, how he will pay. “You’re going to go somewhere where they’ll teach you how to keep yourself safe from bad things. But you’re a very lucky boy, you know. Because you’re mother loves you very much, and she’s going to come and see you where you’re going.”

He is still staring at her with one eye pressed to the crack between the door and the wall. His voice is so soft she has to strain to hear even just over the faint noises making it up this far from the dining hall. “There was a bad thing here.”

She nods slowly. “I know there was. I got rid of it.” She smiles at him gently. “It’s what me and my friends do. We get rid of bad things. …It won’t come back now, but… there are other bad things out there. I have something here though…” She pulls a charm that’s meant to increase resistance to demons from around her neck and crouches, holding it out towards the wide eye watching her cautiously. “It helps you be stronger than the bad things. It will help protect you. If you want it…”

Inch by inch, the door creeps open. When it’s as wide as his body, the boy eyes the distance between them for a moment before finally stepping forward. His voice is sad. “Yes, please. I’d like that very much.”

She wonders exactly how much he does and does not remember. Even Irving was uncertain how much it would be. Teagan believes he remembers nothing, but she is certain now that he has not been so lucky as to escape with no memory whatsoever of the demon. Above all she prays that he has no memory of what the evil thing actually did while wearing his body. Whatever guilt he carries, let it not be that great. When his fingers finally close around the charm, she does not let go quite yet. A charm to protect him is not enough. He is only a child. What he needs is absolution. “There’s only one condition.” She waits for him to nod, eyes on hers. “You must never, ever forget that there is a difference between a bad choice motivated by a desire to do something good and weakness. They aren’t the same. Will you remember?”

He stares at her silently for such a long time that she begins to think he isn’t going to answer. And then his bottom lip trembles, and he sniffs hard with a determined frown. “I’ll remember.”

She lets the charm fall into the boy’s hand and straightens. “Good. Then you’ll be just fine.”

She has only taken a few steps when the boy’s quiet voice trills after her. “Lady Solona?”

If he weren’t so sincere, she’d have to laugh. To be called “my lady” is one thing. To actually be called, “Lady Solona” is almost too much. _Must hold it in for now_. She will laugh about this later. She composes her face before she turns. “It’s just Solona. No miss or ma’am and certainly no lady. Just Solona.”

He smiles at her shyly. “Thank you. You’re… you’re really nice.”

She is almost to the door of the room she’s staying in (with a _bed_! And _clean sheets_!) when Alistair appears from nowhere. She isn’t used to him being able to move quietly, without the rumble of scraping metal.

He just leans against the wall, arms crossed, with the biggest, goofiest grin on his face, not saying anything.

When she can’t stand it anymore, she finally demands, “What?! What are you grinning at?”

“Oh… just you. Lady Solona.”

“Alistair! Don’t you dare!” She makes to bring her hand up to smack him on the shoulder, but he catches her wrist and presses a kiss to her palm.

“Be careful, I bruise easily, remember?! And if you mar my glorious physique, I may lose the attention of Andraste, whose eye I have clearly drawn with my manly beauty, because how else, if not by the grace and mercy of Andraste herself, could you have failed to notice that I am an idiotic ass not half worthy of you?” His smile stays just as goofy but his voice drops to a more serious, adoring tone. “Because you are truly, truly the _nicest_  person in the whole of Thedas, and I am entirely beguiled by you.”

She wants his lips hard and hungry again, but they feather over hers, the ghost of a kiss, and then he is walking away, chuckling to himself softly.

 

 

The trip to Denerim to follow up on a lead about Brother Genitivi begins all sunshine and laughter. When the first droplet of water splatters on her forehead, she looks around startled, but can find no source. So she keeps walking. She and Alistair are at the back of the group, where no one can see that he is holding her hand. When the second droplet rolls down her arm she stops and looks up at him, puzzled. “Alistair? Is that you?”

His look is pure confusion as his head swivels around to look behind him as though someone else might be standing there. “Who else would I be? Are you feeling okay?”

She brings their joined hands up to punch playfully at his stomach. “That isn’t what I meant. I meant—” she wipes a third droplet from the end of her nose with her free hand and holds out her damp fingers “—the water. Where’s it coming from?”

His bafflement slowly fades, replaced by a cloudy displeasure. She doesn’t understand what she’s done to upset him. “Of course it never rains _inside_ the Tower. Andraste’s mercy, at least _we_ were allowed in the Chantry yard. They kept you more caged than an expensive songbird.”

The crease between his brows is suddenly, unexpectedly washed away by a look of delight. “That also means you’ve never danced in the rain!” Alistair calls ahead, “Hey, guys, our fearless leader has never danced in the rain! It’s a travesty! It cannot stand!”

Morrigan and Sten look down right irritated at the nonsense, and even Wynne looks uncertain of the wisdom of this delay, but Leliana lets out a whoop of joy and comes racing back towards them. Solona is relieved that she doesn’t seem to be holding Solona’s confession about her affection for Alistair against either of them. She’s also relieved that Leliana touches her a bit less now, because that seems to have resulted in Alistair glaring sullenly at the ground a lot less. She still feels like an idiot for not understanding the connection earlier.

Alistair laughs, tugging at the straps of his armor. “Help me out of this absurd metal. It’s fine and good for keeping me from being run through with a sword, but it’s rubbish for dancing in the rain. I’d rust and get stuck eternally looking like some ridiculous Orlesian sculpture of Maferath.”

She’s never helped him remove his armor before. Now, trying to help with the dozen different places it is latched to him, she can hardly understand how he has managed on his own. The contortions that boy must have gone through to preserve his modesty…

When he’s finally down to a linen shirt and leather trousers, it feels different than other times at camp she’s seen him out of his armor. Maybe because she helped take it off, or maybe because the way her palms slid against his chest when he kissed her at Redcliffe, but even with everyone watching, it feels… intimate.

The rain is beginning to fall steadily. She throws her head back, mouth open with laughter, catching droplets on her tongue. She flings her arms wide and begins to spin. And everything is perfect. The sound of her and Leliana’s and Alistair’s laughter, the tickling coolness of the rain, the pure flavor of the blue sky, the dizzy feeling of flying as Alistair lifts her into the air. She memorizes every detail of the moment. One day, maybe not for thirty years, but still, one day, she will walk into the Deep Roads and never come out. This memory, this moment, is one that she will take into that dark place with her then.


	18. Such Harmonious Madness

“So… If you were raised in the Chantry have you never…”

When his head snaps up, she immediately lowers her eyes to the pot she is scrubbing, kneeling next to Alistair at the bank of the river.

 _Maker_. What in the Void was she thinking? She didn’t really just _ask_ him that…

His voice is laced with wicked delight when he finally answers. “Never… never what? Had a good pair of shoes?”

She tries for an instant to think of something, anything, other than what they both know she is really asking. Blushing stupidly, she just mumbles, “You know what I mean.”

When she risks glancing at him, his expression is exaggeratedly innocent. “I’m not sure I do. Have I never seen a basilisk? Ate jellied ham? Have I never licked a lamppost in winter?”

Her face begins to truly burn. “Now you’re making fun of me.”

His voice rises in mock indignation. “Make fun of you, dear lady? Perish the thought. Well, tell me, have _you_ ever licked a lamppost in winter?” He leans in closer as he speaks, until she can feel his breath against her ear. The salacious tone in his voice nearly causes her to drop the now clean pot. She keeps scrubbing at it to have something to do with her hands, to avoid looking at him.

Not knowing what else to say, she answers simply, “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ what we’re talking about. I admit I’ve never had a woman… just come out and ask me like this, that’s for sure. I, myself, have never had the _pleasure_. Not that I haven’t thought about it, of course, but… you know.”

She does drop the pot. And then has to scramble foolishly after it before the current carries it away. But Maker’s breath! The way he drew out the word, “pleasure!” His pronunciation of that word alone is a sin, she’s sure. She has no idea what to say though. Because she does not, in fact, _know_. In the Circle, there were no shortage of possibilities for sex. No one ever spoke of love, and no mage _she_ knew had ever married, whatever Bann Teagan said, but sex could be had anywhere, at any time. She had been the odd one out for not participating. But she had just always wanted… well, not some passionless exertion in a dark corner. She’d wanted… the heat that is beginning to pool low in her stomach right now, intensifying with every word from Alistair’s mouth. Here, next to _him_ , she thinks it wasn’t as foolish as the other mages acted not to settle for what was offered in the Circle. So she tries to understand what it was like for him to be raised in the Chantry, in some ways so like and in some ways so unlike the Circle for her. “You’ve never had the opportunity?”

“Well, living in the Chantry is… not exactly a life for rambunctious boys. They taught me to be a gentleman, especially in the presence of a beautiful woman such as yourself. That’s not so bad, is it?” His voice is gentle, betraying just a hint of uncertainty.

She finally raises her eyes up to meet his for more than in instant. “You think I’m beautiful?”

He smiles and reaches out to brush a stray strand of hair away from her face. “Of course you are. You’re ravishing, resourceful, and all those other things you’d probably hurt me for not saying.”

Her voice comes out quieter and more serious than she expects it to. “I’d never hurt you.” She looks down again, embarrassed.

When his lips brush against her temple, she’s so startled by the touch, she nearly drops the pot again. “Nor I you.” His voice is serious, but by the time she raises her eyes to meet his, he gives her a teasing grin and a careless waggle of his brows, as though it is simply that easy to turn off the intensity that is always ready to ignite between them. “Let me be off then, lest your risqué talk make my ears blush.” And he leaves her there by the river, nearly trembling, feeling like spell that’s been primed and prepared and not released.

 

 

“What is there to question? He is an assassin. One does not wake an unconscious assassin to question him. One kills the assassin before one is killed by the assassin.”

Solona sighs, eyes scrunched as she looks up at Sten. “What about when one wants to know who hired said assassin, or who else one can expect to come after oneself?”

Alistair snorts. “Take a wild guess who hired these guys. I’m with Sten. No chatting with assassins.”

“Right. Well. Be prepared, because I’m the fearless leader, and I say we’re going to chat.” Without waiting for approval, she pulls out the dagger that Leliana gave her on the way to the Circle after Redcliffe, where she’d used all her mana more than once and had been left defenseless until enough had trickled back into her to keep casting. She kneels beside the skinny elf’s unconscious body with the dagger prominently displayed, as though she has any idea what to do with it, and aims a healing spell at him.

Alistair mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “Out of your Fade-touched mind,” as he positions himself and his blade closer to the prone body.

After some sleepy mumbling, the elf’s hooded eyes raise to her face. “I rather thought I would wake up dead. Or not wake up at all as the case may be. But I see you haven’t killed me yet.”

“That could easily be rectified.” _Yes. That sounds appropriately tough. Really getting the hang of this whole unphasable-commander-of-crazy-people thing_.

And then he proceeds to _flirt_ with her. Not like Alistair-flirting either. The kind of over the top, torrid absurdity that seems somehow to be expected from someone with perpetual bedroom eyes. He actually calls her a deadly sex goddess at one point! She hopes he doesn’t notice that she’s blushing—probably tomato red, by the feel of it—as it rather ruins that whole stone hard badass persona she was going for up to that point.

She can’t believe she’s actually considering letting him stay with them. Maybe it’s that bit about being bought on the slave market as a child. Maker, she’s soft. And daft. And if she’s wrong about this, she could get every single person who relies on her decision-making killed.

Still, what is she supposed to say, “Well, nice chatting with you. I’ll just be killing you now?” The real reason that one shouldn’t chat with assassins is because how is one just supposed to kill them after having a chat? How does one segue into that? Stupid though she may be for it, she believes he’s been honest with her. So she tells him his offer to ally with them is accepted.

“What?! You’re taking the assassin with us now? Does that really seem like a good idea?” Alistair is outraged, his drawn sword still pointed at the elf. His displeasure has been radiating off him with increasing intensity since that “deadly sex goddess” comment.

“Alistair.” She places a hand on the arm holding the sword. “We could use him”

He still isn’t happy. “All right, all right. Still. If there was a sign we were desperate, I think it just knocked on the door and said hello.” He gives his sword one last flourish in the direction of the elf—Zevran—to emphasize his words. “You don’t actually have to answer that metaphorical door to _every single_ Maker forsaken tap by any deranged lunatic, you know.”

 

 

There’s a tension in Alistair for days after she allows Zevran to join them. He hardly sleeps at all, spending his nights three feet from the entrance to her tent, arms crossed and glowering.

Until the day they stumble across the group of darkspawn with an emissary hidden in their midst. Alistair charges toward the creatures as they rush forward, like he always does, while she casts behind him, a flurry of destruction pouring from her while keeping a continual eye on the barrier that Wynne maintains around him just in case it fails.

With a powerful swing, his sword slices entirely through the neck of a genlock, the head flying away, the momentum carrying him around so that they make eye contact for just a moment. Only it isn’t a moment. He doesn’t move. Still as a statue, his sword still at an angle that suggests his momentum alone should still be moving him. And she knows. A paralysis spell. Her eyes go wide as she realizes how many darkspawn are descending on his exposed back. Too many. The barrier won’t hold if they all attack as one. She thinks immediately of Alistair’s pale face at Redcliffe when he’d lost so much blood and panic rises in her. She tries to think of a spell to stop them all, but the only ones she can think of would hit Alistair too. Unless… unless she can direct it around him. That kind of control is obscenely difficult to achieve, next to impossible. But he’s still staring at her with those amber eyes that can’t reflect any of the terror that being frozen, stuck still like that must induce. So she begins to cast. It’s a big spell and it takes her a moment to gather it and a moment longer to focus it enough that she thinks she can make the lightning flow around Alistair without harming him. Just before the creatures reach him she releases, and at the same moment she feels a spray of something warm across the back of her neck, but she ignores it. A spell like this requires concentration, direction even after she’s let it go. With a wave of sizzling and hissing that leaves behind the acrid smell of burnt hair, the darkspawn drop, some shrieking briefly before the sound cuts off. All the while she’s focusing on Alistair, trying to reinforce the barrier that glows faintly just above his skin, trying to direct the flow of her spell away from him. When she finally lets go entirely of the spell, she realizes just how much more mana controlling it like that consumes. She sways on her feet and would hit the ground if it weren’t for the arms that catch her from behind, gently lowering her.

The caster dead, Alistair is released from his spell, the last of his momentum carrying him a few more inches around. He drops his sword and runs to her, falling to his knees when he gets there. Even though he’s close enough to wrap his hands around her arms and draw her to him, she thinks he looks strangely distant. “Solona? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with her? Wynne!”

“Calm yourself, Alistair. She’s just exhausted herself.  If what she did didn’t kill her on the spot, it isn’t going to now.” Wynne seems terribly far away too, hovering over them. When did she become so tall?

“What do you mean, kill her on the spot? What did she do?” His voice is still frantic.

“She cast a spell that was too much for her. She’s called forth the like before, but she obviously didn’t realize that casting a spell and controlling it are entirely different things. She cast it around you without letting it touch you. The amount of power that takes is… immense. And it requires a continual flow of mana to sustain it.” Solona watches as Wynne crouches toward her from her great height, and presses a warm hand against her freezing cheek. She doesn’t realize she’s so cold until she feels the warmth. She shivers. “Fool girl.” Though the words are harsh, her tone is gentle. “I’ve seen more experienced mages than you die when they wouldn’t let go of a spell that was too big for them.”

“She could have died?” Alistair’s voice is shifting from frantic to angry. He looks down into her face and shakes her slightly. “Why would you do that? Don’t you ever listen to anything I say?”

Though she’s so tired that it’s a struggle not to close her eyes, she manages to to smile slightly as she responds. “I listen to everything you say.”

One eyebrow shoots up, but the look of anger doesn’t entirely disappear. “Oh? Like watching your back and not exposing yourself and staying safe? Did you even realize there was a hurlock two seconds from running his sword straight through you while you were casting that spell? Maker, Solona, I couldn’t even blink, and I thought I was going to have to stand there and watch you die. If it hadn’t been for Zevran coming out of _nowhere_ —” He cuts himself off with a shake of his head, then sighs and presses a hard kiss to her forehead.

He looks up at the figure crouching behind her. Finally, his voice hard, he says. “I know you didn’t have to do that. You could have let her die and no one here would even have known you could have stopped it. So… perhaps I’ve treated you a bit unfairly. And… thank you.”

Solona shifts her head to see the elf, his eyes glancing back and forth between her and Alistair with a rather wicked grin. “Yes, well. I find that following behind your glorious leader rather suits me. It is a… pleasing sight to behold, no?”

Alistair’s jaw clenches, and though it’s hard to be certain what he’s muttering with his teeth locked together like that, Solona is pretty sure it’s, “I hate you.”


	19. Everything Glowed With a Gleam

“You’re quite taken with each other, aren’t you?”

Solona’s gaze leaves Alistair and moves to Wynne, sitting near her by the fire as she watches the object of her affection gather more wood at the edge of the clearing they’ve set up camp in. Her arms are wrapped about her legs, cheek resting on her knee. She can’t help a telling smile. “You know about Alistair and me?” As though any of them could possibly not.

“It’s hard not to notice the doe-eyed looks he gives you, especially when he thinks no one is watching. It’s almost too sweet for my tastes, and I’m an old lady who should be making lace hearts and fuzzy blankets with animal motifs.”

She laughs lightly, feeling peaceful. It’s warm in front of the fire. There were no darkspawn today. She rubs Muffin’s ear before answering. For being so coarse elsewhere, his ear is almost silky. “You’re not like the average old lady.”

“No, I won’t be making socks with pom-poms for you anytime soon, but that’s hardly my point. I’ve noticed your blossoming relationship, and I wanted to ask you where you thought it was going. Alistair is a fine lad, skilled in battle, but quite inexperienced when it comes to affairs of the heart. I would hate to see him get hurt.”

She feels suddenly as though she has fallen out of the peaceful, pleasant night, and into some other night, as fraught with anxiety as ever. She isn’t warm anymore. “Are you saying I might hurt Alistair?”

“Not intentionally, no. But there is great potential for tragedy here, for one or both of you. You are both Grey Wardens, and he is the son of a king. You have responsibilities which supersede your personal desires.”

“I can handle my responsibilities and my relationships.” Her voice is so cold she hardly recognizes it as her own when she answers. No, that’s not true. She’s beginning to recognize it as the voice she uses when she pretends she knows what she’s doing. But she has never used this voice to talk about herself before, never used it to talk to her companions. She uses it for threats and intimidation, for certainty and firmness; it is, she supposes, the voice of a liar. This, the idea that she can handle things, is surely a lie. She has no experience having either responsibilities or relationships, and no idea how to handle anything. But she would rend herself into pieces before she would admit that to the meddling old cow now.

“Love is ultimately selfish. It demands that one be devoted to a single person, who may fully occupy one’s mind and heart, to the exclusion of all else. A Grey Warden cannot afford to be selfish. You may be forced to make a choice between saving your love and saving everyone else, and then what would you do?”

She would find a way to save them all. It’s what she does. She knows this blithe answer won’t work on Wynne right now though. She circles the issue again and again until her head and heart ache. “I don’t want to have to make that choice.”

“Nothing is certain. Not in these times. You cannot take anything for granted. I want you to be aware of this.”

“Alistair and I can handle whatever comes out way.” She sounds certain. She is anything but.

“If you insist. I have given you my advice. Do with it what you will.”

Solona rises from the fire, chin high, without responding. She walks unfalteringly away, into the trees. When she is sure no one can see her anymore, she wilts against the nearest trunk and presses one hand over her mouth. She doesn’t know if she is holding in a sob or a scream, but she won’t let it get the best of her. What does the old harpy know about anything? That is the thought she _wants_ to think, at least. The bitterness in her mouth will not disguise the fact that she respects Wynne, and that is why this cuts straight through her. There is no reason for this crushing anguish though, she tells herself. She feels as though Alistair himself has told her he doesn’t want her, that there is no hope for them.

She hears him calling her, but doesn’t answer. He finds her eventually anyway. His hands are warm, sliding up her neck to cup her cheeks. “Why didn’t you answer me? What’s wrong?”

Her usual answer of, “Nothing, I’m fine,” dies on her lips. She will not dare tell him what Wynne has said to her, but since leaving the Circle with Duncan, she has tried to remake herself as girl with no past. Now, as an act of rebellion against Wynne’s hurtful words, she wants to give him some piece of herself, a piece of something true. She puts her hands on his and pulls them down so she can speak.

“The Tranquil at the Tower…” Her throat seizes, and she isn’t sure she _can_ continue. She never thought she would tell anyone this story. She never thought she would dare to bare this scarred and battered piece of her soul to anyone. He says he’s beguiled by her, but how much of her does he know? She wants him to know her. She wants him to know her and still look at her like he adores her. And if she can’t have that, then at least he can know her and realize how mistaken he’s been, and then she will do as Wynne thinks she should and let him go. Her throat unclenches and she inhales deeply. “Her name was Neria. She was… she was my best friend. She was like my sister. She was amazing and brilliant and fearless. She broke all the rules. It’s dangerous to live like that in the Circle… but she had this smile, just the right amount of mischief and sweetness that made even the Knight Commander feel like an accomplice when she flashed it at him. I can’t count the number of times she got a slap on the wrist for something another mage would have spent a week in solitary confinement for… or worse. Not that we really understood what the danger was. We knew Tranquility existed, that it involved being cut off from the Fade, but the Tranquils never came down to the first floor, and apprentices weren’t allowed up beyond the first floor, so…

“She was a year older than me. And she was powerful. When she was seventeen, we knew they’d come for her Harrowing soon. She promised she’d come down to visit me all the time after… Did you know that the templars never tell you when your Harrowing will be, that they come for you in the middle of the night? They take you from your bed in a crowded dormitory and pretend that all the other girls can’t see you or are still asleep. We never were. No one dares talk about it though. That dormitory was never so silent as nights when a girl had her Harrowing. I remember the night they came for Neria. They didn’t let her take anything with her, so I knew she’d be back. They always brought back the girls who passed, back to their apprentice beds one last time, to sleep off the lyrium. I stayed awake waiting for them to bring her back. She was so clever, and she had so much magic. I didn’t think it would be long.

“I waited all night. And in the morning the First Enchanter came and told me that she had not passed her Harrowing.

“I thought that meant she was dead. It was like they all got together and decided that it would be better if I thought that. They lied to me. For a year, they lied. And then they came for me in the night.

“When I woke up in my bed, Jowan was there. You have to understand, other than Neria, Jowan was the only real friend I ever had. It wasn’t that I disliked anyone or anything, it was just… Everything is a game in the Circle. Everything everyone says, every smile. Except Neria’s. Neria always meant her smiles. That’s why they were so special in that place. And Jowan… Jowan could turn the game off. He played it, as well as most there, but then he’d say something real. He was my friend, and when Neria was gone, he was the only one I had.

“He was there to interrogate me about my Harrowing. Because he believed that they weren’t planning to give him his. He said that they were planning something else for him, something that they did to unruly or weak mages. Unruly mages like Neria. Weak mages like him. I didn’t believe him then. I thought he’d lost his mind. I was planning to tell the Senior Enchanter, lest he do something stupid and get himself hurt or in real trouble. I put on my new mage robes and I left the first floor. And he was right. There she was. Only it wasn’t her anymore. It was the antithesis of Neria. It spoke slowly and without emotion where she babbled so fast you could hardly keep up and laughed the whole time. It looked disinterested and stared at a spot on the wall. There was never _anything_ Neria was disinterested in.

“It was like she’d come back to life and died all over again in an instant. And this was what Jowan believed they wanted to do to him. I didn’t know… I didn’t know that it was because he _was_ a blood mage. I didn’t know. I just wanted to stop them from doing that to anyone else I cared about. So I helped him destroy his phylactery. Because they had scraped the soul out of my Neria and left an empty shell walking around, wearing her face, rubbing it in every time I set eyes on her that our lives were games and the templars were the gamekeepers. I helped him because he was my friend.

“I knew the consequences of destroying his phylactery, and I did it anyway. I did it for him, and I was rewarded with his betrayal. So you see, Duncan saved me too, with an act of pity or mercy or kindness or whatever it was he felt. I left that place empty. And I’ve been trying to fill myself up with every beautiful thing I can. The sun and the stars and music and… I’m so scared I won’t get to keep any of it. I’ve never been allowed to keep anything good or beautiful. I’m so scared that none of it is really for meant for me. That I’m going to be shut back up in some stone keep with no windows and no sun and no stars and no music and… no you.”

He’s listened silently this whole time, and they just stare at each other in the beats of silence after she finally quits talking. When he finally speaks his voice is soft and strangely happy. “Thank you.”

She gives a half laugh that comes out as a harsh snort. “You’re _thanking_ me? For emotionally vomiting all over you?”

“No, you didn’t… that’s not… For trusting me? Because I say everything—really, pretty much everything; I have a thought and it just pops right out of my mouth. And you… you’re a mystery. Sometimes I wonder if you don’t say anything because there’s some part of you that still thinks of me as templar—I mean, I _never_ was—but I worry that you… Just thank you. For trusting me.” Slowly he brings his hands up to cup her face again. “Just so you know, the idea of you being locked away anywhere is completely crazy, impractical, and insane. You don’t have to worry about such nonsense ever again. Would you like to know why?”

She gives a tiny nod between his palms.

“Because they’d have to go through me to get to you to lock you away. And I’d like to see them try.”

 

 

They’re just across the market from Brother Genitivi’s house when Alistair freezes, his eyes wide. “That’s… my sister’s house. I’m almost sure of it, this is… yes, this is the right address. She could be inside. Could we… go and see?”

Solona is caught off guard. She hadn’t forgotten about Alistair’s sister. She was going to ask him for the address as soon as they were done with Brother Genitivi, she just wasn’t expecting to do this yet. She feels a bloom of excitement for him, though his own face is all tension. “Yes, let’s do that.”

“Will she even know who I am? Does she even know I exist? My sister. That sounds very strange… ‘sister.’ ‘Siiiiissster…’ Hmm. Now I’m babbling. Maybe we should go. Let’s go. Let’s just… go.”

She knows he isn’t quite staying afloat on his sea of anxiety, but she can’t help a giggle. She steps forward and presses the tips of her fingers to his lips. “Alistair.”

She feels him sigh against her skin, and then his hand is at her wrist, keeping her hand where it is as he presses kisses against her fingertips without saying anything else, just giving her his most pitiful puppy dog look.

She twists her hand in his grip so that their fingers slide together. “Let’s go meet your sister.”

She is not expecting to be standing back in this same spot not even five minutes later. And she is livid. That frigid, shivering rage that only a lifetime devoted to self-control in the Circle keeps from pouring out of her. She wants to go back in and make good on her threat to cut out the tongue of that foul, wretched woman.

The look of heartbreak on Alistair’s face nearly drives her back in. She can’t believe he got mad at _her_ for making that comment about how she ought to have her tongue cut out!

“…I feel like a complete idiot.”

What she wants to respond with is, “ _I_ feel like burning down her house.” Instead, she puts her own anger away. This isn’t about her. She modulates her breathing, but she cannot entirely keep the venom from her voice. “What a cow. You don’t need her. You have people who care about you. Who, you know, aren’t as soulless as darkspawn.”

“Such as? The only person who ever cared about me was Duncan. And he’s gone.” She knows Alistair well enough now to know that these words are a thousand times worse said in this flat tone, without a whine, without being on the verge of tears. His heart is broken, but that isn’t all this is. He really believes it. He believes it with a calm acceptance that tells her he’s believed it for a long time.

“I care about you.” _To the exclusion of all else_. It terrifies her to admit this last part to herself; she does not dare say it out loud. Wynne’s words have shaken her to her core because they are true. Seeing him so unhappy has revealed to her just how much she would do or sacrifice for his happiness. If she were a better person, she would probably heed Wynne’s advice. But she isn’t good, whatever Alistair says about her. She’s a selfish, selfish mage. She wants sunshine and music and _Alistair_. If there is a price to be paid, so be it. These are the things she wants, and she will fight for them. She will ache for them. She will keep them for every moment that she can.

 

 

“You’re kidding me, right? You’ve got to be kidding. Sten, you’re big and scary, tell her she isn’t being funny and this is no time for jokes. Leliana, tell her, it’s _blasphemous_ to joke in the presence of the ashes of Andraste.” Alistair’s voice raises an octave and becomes more frantic with every buckle Solona loosens on her armor. His eyes are locked on her fingers while his cheeks burn in a way that tells her that he wants to look away but can’t.

Really, it isn’t as though stripping in front of Alistair while _everyone else watches_ is her idea of a good time either. It probably helps that she’s dressed and undressed in a room full of other girls her entire life, but this isn’t exactly the Circle dormitory, and she’s certainly never undressed in front of a _boy_ , and one who has set her alight with his kisses at that. Maker, she’s only ever _been_ kissed once before Alistair, and that as part of some ridiculous game of Neria’s!

But they’ve all agreed that this is what the clue carved into the pedestal that stands before the wall of flames means. Either they strip down, hoping against hope that this will allow them to walk through the magical flames that burn with such intensity and power that they nearly singe her from a distance of several feet, or they turn around and forget about the ashes that are their only hope of curing Eamon.

They can’t turn back now. They killed people to get here. Delusional fanatics that the villagers were, it sickens her. They weren’t warriors. They weren’t darkspawn or Teyrn Loghain’s men. They were just idiots who believed their foolishness enough to die for it. So her fingers keep unbuckling. Despite her own embarrassment, she can’t help enjoying Alistair’s appalled mortification just a little. Letting herself be amused by him distances her from her own anxiety. She finally lets the mail armor drop and immediately pulls her tunic over her head, leaving her in just her leggings and breast band.

He jerks as though he’s been slapped, his eyes finally moving, anywhere but on her. They settle at last on Zevran and he moves with a dark frown, putting himself between Solona and the elf, his back to her, glowering forward.

Well. That actually makes it a bit easier, since Alistair’s really the only one whose opinion on what she looks like in her smallclothes she cares about anyway. Looking around to see that everyone other than Alistair has accepted their task with as much calmness and dignity as they can muster, she pulls her leggings off as well. Mischievously, she drops them so that they fall to the ground just in front of Alistair.

“Maker, Solona!” He grabs her tunic from the floor behind him and spins, pressing the material blindly against her shoulders so that it drapes down her body.

She can’t resist. She flashes him a coy smile. “I suppose we are meant to take off our smallclothes as well? It would be rather stupid to die because I'd stripped down to my smalls and not been willing to part with them as well.”

“Ice,” he says desperately, “you could put out the fire with ice.”

She sighs and the coyness settles into mildly exasperated amusement. “Alistair. This isn’t like when you catch our supper on fire. It’s a powerful spell. Surely you can feel it? Either I can put my clothes back on and burn to death, or you can let go, take off your clothes, and come with me to get the only thing that has any chance of saving Arl Eamon. You pick.”

After a long moment his face scrunches miserably. “I can’t,” he replies, all the vowels drawn out in a whine. “I’ll just… I’ll just wait here for you. Better yet, we’ll just send Zevran for the ashes. We can wait here together. You know, _clothed_.”

“Of course you _can_ take off your clothes. It really isn’t that big of a deal. And _I’m_ going first. Not Zevran. And _you’re_ going to look completely ridiculous if you don’t follow.” She tugs at the fabric where he holds it against her shoulders, but his grip doesn’t give.

She’s starting to wonder if there’s something other than his modesty making him refuse like this. It doesn’t occur to her what it might be until Morrigan’s scathing voice rings out. “Oh, honestly, let me be the first to reassure you, Alistair, that absolutely no one here has _any_ interest in your _reaction_ to being around naked women for the _first time in your life_ , if that’s what’s causing this delay. So can we _please_ finish our business in this dismal place already?”

She wonders if there is anyone in Thedas who could use the word “please” and make something sound _more_ like an insulting command. She feels a wave of relief that for whatever reason the witch actually seems to _like_ her. Then again, the reason she hates Alistair is probably because he’s actually been incredibly unkind to her. Mocking someone who truly has never had a friend for never having had a friend is decidedly crueler than suggesting someone is an idiot. Every time she insults him, he doesn’t hesitate to take his retorts one step further.

Except now.

His blush triples. When he mutters to himself, so low that only she can hear, she wonders if he even knows he’s speaking out loud. “She probably uses some kind of blood magic to read my mind when no one is looking. I hate her.”

Finally, crumbling, he gives Solona his most pitiful look. “Fine. But _don’t let them look_.” He spins around, not facing her, drops her tunic, and begins to scurry out of his armor and the clothing beneath it as fast as he can, glowering once again at Zevran. “If you don’t take your eyes off of her, I’ll take them off of her _and out of your face_ with my sword. And then _step on them_.”

Once he’s down to his smallclothes, he hesitates one long moment, then squeezes his eyes shut, shoves them down and is stomping through the fire before Solona, suddenly the one unsure where to look, can stop him, before she can insist that she be the one to test out their theory and see if they are correct. She realizes that this is the only reason he finally relented. Because he wasn’t going to let her be the first one to try to walk through those flames. Just in case they were wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I initially started writing this with Solona wearing mage robes, then changed to Warden mage armor. Apparently I wrote this chapter before that change and didn't realize it until just now. I fixed it. Feel free to point out dumb inconsistencies!
> 
> Also, my story has now surpassed 100 kudos. !!! You guys make me all stupid kinds of happy :).


	20. In Pity Give Me All

On the way back to Redcliffe, they somehow acquire a golem. Well, no, Alistair revises, “That makes it sound like it’s a normal golem that fights for you and does as you command. Instead, like all of our companions, it's broken and insane.”

The camp is set up for the night, and the two of them are the only ones left at the fire, Leliana having finally made her way back to her tent. The moment the flap settles, Alistair’s hands are tangling in her hair, pulling her to him. He kisses her hard enough for her to know he’s been dying for Leliana to leave for a while now so that he could. When they break apart, he rains small kisses down her jaw, continuing their conversation in broken fragments between. “I don’t know… how you can stand… that thing… I’d think that… all the kissing has… addled your brain, but… you liked Morrigan… and Sten before that.”

All that kissing… anytime the others aren’t looking, he’s stealing one. When she’s checking him over after a battle—which she always does, no matter how many times he says he’s fine, ever since that one stupid time at Redcliffe—he presses a delicate flutter of kisses to her temples. When he’s at the back of the group and she’s just ahead, he’ll grab her arms to stop her suddenly and press kisses to the curve of her neck or where fine little curls tremble against her skin at the edge of her hairline. When she’s finding sticks for the fire when they make camp in the evening, he finds her between the trees and pushes her up against the nearest trunk, the heat of him contrasting with the air that’s more and more chilled as autumn tightens her grip on Ferelden. He still often seems unsure what to do with his hands, waving them around before they land on her shoulders or back.

For all that her signature spells fall under the domains of ice and lightening, when he kisses her, she is flame, burning hotter and faster every time he touches her, until he can hardly kiss her more than once, twice, before she feels like she’ll burn up if he touches her again. And he’s always right there with her, pulling his lips from hers much too soon, gasping, his hands held up by his shoulders, as though to show he bears to weapons with which to defend himself from what she does to him. And she just watches, eyes heavy-lidded and wanting and disappointed while he walks away, until the night before they reach Redcliffe with the ashes. When he pulls away, a dissatisfied whine issues from her throat, and she throws her arms around his neck and presses the length of her body against him. His body moves forward until she’s slammed back against the half crumbled ruin of a wall harder than she guesses he means to, because he’s trying to pull away, trying to ask if she’s okay, but she just clings harder, licks her tongue against his more insistently. And then his hands are on her hips, and they aren’t pushing away; they’re pulling her closer. Her thoughts feel like they are fracturing, like she is almost outside herself, but at the same time she’s never been more present. As though of its own accord, one leg lifts to wrap around his hip, pulling him against her in a way that makes an involuntary tremor run down her spine.

He wrenches away from her mouth, hands moving to her wrists to pin them against the wall on either side of her head. “Maker, Lona! Stop.”

The cold roughness of stone bites into the backs of her hands where he has them pressed, but it does nothing to clear her thoughts. Everything is hard: his chest, the wall behind her, _him_ , _there_. And she wants more. She’s so far past the fear that she can’t remember _ever_ not wanting more from him. And so, instead of stopping, holding his gaze boldly, she raises up on her toes and comes back down, pressing her hips even harder against his. His eyelids flutter and then snap open, his gaze dark. His voice is rough as broken stone. “ _Behave_ , minx.”

 _Well, what do you know? Alistair_ ** _does_** _have it in him to issue a command._ Of course the one time he chooses to rise to it is the one time she rather desperately wishes he would be a compliant as ever. She projects her swollen bottom lip in an exaggerated pout and blinks up at him, feeling unreasonable. “ _Why_? Behaving is boring. And cold. I’d rather be warm than well-behaved.”

He actually growls at her. “Didn’t I tell you that you deserve better than a freezing, dusty old stable loft? At least that was the stable of a _castle_. The freezing, crumbing ruin of a place that probably once housed some kind of apostate-hermit, and which no longer even has a roof, is _not_ better.” And then, with a petulant frown, as though his words might be unclear, he adds, “It’s worse.”

Her voice is breathless, daring. “So if we were in the guest quarters in Redcliffe Castle right now, would you…?”

His laugh is a dark tickle in her ear as he leans in to nuzzle her. “Would I what? Eat an entire wheel of Eamon’s most expensive cheese as payment for the dignity I lost getting those Blighted ashes for him? Pour that itching powder that Zevran makes into Teagan’s bed sheets because I don’t like the way he looks at you? Read to you from a book of Antivan love poems to express my pure and chaste devotion to you?”

This game again then. But her comfort with him has grown, and her desire makes her brave where by the river she was not. “Mm. None of those. But funny you should mention it, because I can _feel_ your _devotion_ right now, and it doesn’t feel very _chaste_. Nor, for that matter, is Antivan poetry. We had a few volumes in the Circle, you know. But if you really don’t know what I’m talking about, maybe it’s a conversation I should save for Teagan. I bet he’d get it.”

His response is immediate. “The Void, you will, vixen.” He bites her, unexpectedly hard, on the neck, but rather than discouraging her from anything, it just makes her hips grind against his again, harder.

“Solona.” His voice is serious and… sad. It finally halts her where nothing else has.

“It’s not that I don’t want… _Maker,_ you must be able to _tell_ that I… I just… _You_ are perfect. You deserve… I want… I want it to be… perfect.”

She sighs and lowers the leg that has been wrapped around his hip. “You are _too, too_ ** _sweet_**. If you weren’t the most adorable person to ever live it might actually be sickening.”

 

 

The moment Eamon's eyelids shudder and open is a moment of exquisite relief. It feels like a reprieve of the same magnitude as Duncan's voice interrupting Knight Commander Greagoir. She isn't the only one who seems to feel that so much weight has been lifted from her that she's practically levitating.

If she thought the last dinner they had in this castle was an event of desperately clinging to a moment of light in the midst of darkness, it is nothing to this feast. This is the dawn, the break of day, a promise that everything is going to be easier now. They still have to take the treaties to the elves and the dwarves, but Solona feels in a very real way that they have dumped the issue of what to actually _do_ about Loghain into Eamon’s capable hands.

She is no more certain what to think of Eamon now than she was when she realized Alistair had been raised sleeping in the stables. He was polite to her, solicitous of her opinion once he had gathered himself and been filled in enough to start considering their options. She cannot entirely discount how adoringly Alistair speaks of him. Eamon seems kindly enough. But he let his wife's jealousy of a ten-year-old drive away a child with no one else to care for him. And she is not sure how to reconcile the kind of man he  _appears_ to be with the kind of man who does that.

She wishes she could sit next to Alistair, but she’s been given a seat of honor across from him, at Eamon’s other side. The table is wide, and Eamon spends most of the night leaning in towards Alistair, saying things she cannot hear. At first, Alistair keeps shooting dark looks at Teagan, on Solona’s other side, who has scooted his chair close against hers where he can easily murmur things that make her laugh. And then Alistair is just looking earnestly at Eamon, nodding, saying little. Finally, her eyes meet his, and she knows something is wrong. The expression there can only be described as panic. He doesn’t look at her or Teagan again for the rest of the night. And when everyone rises from the table, he’s just… gone. When she’s excused herself from everyone, she looks for him in his room, in the kitchens, in the armory. Finally, not bothering to grab a candle, she makes her way out to the stables. If he is in his loft, he hasn’t brought a candle either. She climbs carefully, by the light of the moon. When her head clears the loft floor, she finally exhales with relief.

“There you are.”

He’s sitting in front of the empty fire bowl, staring fixated where the flames would be if there were any. He says nothing. So she says nothing else either, just sits down next to him, and when the cold wooden beams bite at her through her leggings, she conjures flames for the bowl. She doesn’t know what’s wrong and therefore doesn’t know what to say, but she can at least give him something pretty to look at, something to ease the discomfort of the cold. The flames dance and flicker merrily in shades of orange and gold for a long time before he says, so quietly she can hardly hear it over the soft snapping of the flames, “He wants to make me king.”

She thinks about this for a long time before answering. She can’t help that she thinks about what it means for the two of them first. Wynne’s words haunt her. _He is the son of a king… You have responsibilities which supersede your personal desires_. When he told her his father was King Maric, it had been like something out of one of Neria’s books. A silly bit of romanticism. After all, he was Alistair, who wouldn’t even lead their rag tag band of misfits. It was absurd to think he’d ever really be considered for succession. But Theirin blood means more than just blood. It’s more than pedigree. In Ferelden, it is a call to arms. And he is the last one left who can be that emblem. He bears the blood of the heroes she’s read about in books. Dragon blood, or so the Qunari say. Truly, he might be king. And _she_ will never, _ever_ be anyone’s queen.

But what does he even _want_? She knows what he’s afraid of, _why_ he’s afraid of being king. He’s afraid of being a horrible king. He’s afraid of being a disappointment. To Eamon. To his dead father and brother, whether they’re there to know it or not. But that doesn’t tell her anything about what he wants, of what lies beyond his fear. “Of course he does. You’re kind and good and decent and brave. You’re not just heir to a throne. Your blood is the blood of King Maric, of the Rebel Queen, of Calenhad himself. You’re heir to a _legacy_. Of course he wants you to be king. And you _could_ be a good one—you may not know that, but I do. But… what do **_you_** _want_ , Alistiar?”

He finally turns to her, eyes wide. “Do you really have to ask? Not that. _Never_ that.”

“Because you’re scared of disappointing Eamon? Or because you actually don’t want it?”

“You might think it’s crazy since I was technically conscripted, but being a Grey Warden is the only thing I’ve ever actually felt like was something I chose and not just something that happened to me. It’s the only time I’ve ever been really _happy_. Do you think being king would make any sane person _happy_? It’s all horrible decisions—even assuming I could make the right decision most of the time, that I don’t let down—not just Eamon, but every citizen of Ferelden! Assuming I actually make the right decisions, it’s still all horrible decisions. And paperwork. And balls, and nobles, and the idiotic games that nobles play. And sex with serving girls, let’s not forget that. That’s meant to be the ‘fun’ part. Maker, it makes me sick. I don’t want _any_ of it. I _want_ to be a Grey Warden. With you. I _want_ **_you_**. Solona, if he makes me king—”

She kisses him then, closed lips, just hard enough to silence him. Because she knows now, doesn’t need to doubt or question ever again. What Eamon wants be damned. When she pulls away, he actually has tears in his eyes. She pulls his head down against her heart, wraps her arms around his shoulders, and rocks him slowly. “No one can make you into _anything_ without you letting them, Alistair. If you don’t want to be king, then _don’t be_. I know you think you owe Eamon but…” Oh, the things she wants to tell him. Because she’s been thinking about it, about the way he was surprised Isolde hadn’t given his little statuettes to Connor, and she’s pretty sure the woman has taken something that was his and given it to the boy in the past. And she doesn’t think this awful, cold loft was always where he slept. He _couldn’t_ have slept here as a baby. Once, she feels sure, he slept where Eamon now houses his own son. She can see the way, one step at a time, he let Alistair be cast aside when he was the only person in the world that Alistair had who was supposed to care for him, and worse, she can see how letting that happen has shaped Alistair’s beliefs about what he is and is not worthy of for the rest of his life. But he’s actually in tears, and yelling at him about how it isn’t right, about what he deserves, isn’t going to help him or make him feel better. So she just says, “…you don’t,” and strokes his hair.

 

 

“Maker’s breath, there you two are.” Wynne’s voice startles them both from sleep, and when they jerk awake, entwined in each other as they are, their head’s collide with a thick clunking sound.

“You’ve given the entire castle much more worry than an old woman like me can endure this early in the morning. And how did I end up being the one that had to search the area with a _ladder_ , anyway?” She humphs to herself. “I’m climbing back down before I fall and break a hip. I’ll just let everyone know that the archdemon did _not_ materialized out of thin are, devour you both, and then dematerialize in the middle of the night.”

After a moment of awkward disentanglement, they catch each other’s eye, and suddenly they’re both laughing. He kisses her, a playful peck, and when he pulls back he meets her eyes with a rather serious expression. “I—” And then he just stops, closes his mouth, and shakes his head, smiling at her. “Come on. We should go prostrate ourselves before Eamon for our verbal lashing before he gathers any more momentum.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A rating change is coming with the next chapter. I'm, um, kind of embarrassed about it...


	21. An Object Among Dreams

From Redcliffe, they head for the Brecillian Forest. Bodahn and Sandal follow along, meeting up with them at camp each night, and their presence continues to add that undefinable sense of warmth and completion to the party that still reminds Solona of her happiest times with Neria and Jowan in the Circle. But better, because this is accompanied by smell of sizzling meat and overseen by a host of glittering stars rather than glowering templars. She thinks about Alistair’s joke the night he first kissed her about missing “this.” And she suddenly realizes with a jolt so strong it’s almost painful, _Maker, yes, yes, yes_ , when this ends she will miss it. That sense of delighted accomplishment when she actually makes Morrigan laugh. The ache of protectiveness when she sits by Leliana, adding braids to her hair fastened with little silver beads that make a tinkling sound when she moves her head as the girl tells her about Marjolaine, her one time lover, her betrayer who disguised her own crimes as Leliana’s and handed her over to the Orlesian guard. The discovery that beneath that expression that only ever changes in its level of dourness, Sten actually has a _sense of humor_ , and that all of their debates are laced with his sardonic amusement with life. The moment when she finally makes it down all the convoluted passages leading there to the heart of Zevran, and discovers that the reason he hides it away is because it is, in its own way, as soft and fragile as Alistair’s. The look of unexpected concern on Shale’s stone face when she comments on how very in danger of being squashed at any moment Solona is. The look of pride on Sandal’s face when he hands Alistair his sword back with a rune that weakens darkspawn affixed to the pommel. And always, always, always, the warm steadiness of Muffin’s nose that fits perfectly under her fingers as he stands beside her.

And Alistair. Maker help her, _Alistair_.

He’s been… odd since they left Redcliffe. He still holds her hand—in fact, he’s given up on pretending he doesn’t when others are looking. He jokes with her. But when they kiss, he pulls away almost instantly, tapping her nose or pinching her cheek teasingly, making some joke to distract her. He’s pulling her closer and holding her apart all at once, and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

She’s digging through the trunk of objects that Bodahn lets them keep on his wagon, looking for the little carved stone warrior she’d found near the Temple of Sacred Ashes and meant to give to Alistair. She’d not gotten the chance, and now she can’t find it. What she does find is the slender longsword they’d found (and by found she means appropriated from someone who didn’t need it anymore, and by someone who didn’t need it anymore she means someone they killed) in the same caverns. Alistair’s face had been disgruntled the moment he touched it. “The balance is all off. And could have been such a nice sword too. Who would waste dragonbone on shoddy workmanship like this? Ah, well. We can probably sell it to some dumb Orlesian who can’t tell the difference.”

She only grabs the pommel to move it aside, but the moment her fingers close around it, a shiver runs through her. _Magic_. Like picking up a good staff. And pulling it out, staring at it in wonder, she understands now why it failed to impress Alistair. It was never made for someone like him. It was made for someone like _her_. The magic flowing through the weapon does something to the heft of it. Whereas she’s sure that to Alistair it would weigh exactly what a dragonbone sword should weigh—moveable, certainly, but nothing she could hold level in front of her with one hand for more than a moment—in her grip this sword slices easily through the air. She thinks of the little figurine in the stable loft where Alistair had spent his childhood, the one she’d slipped into her pocket when he wasn’t looking. Knight Enchanter Esmerelda. He’d said he didn’t know mages came more fierce and beautiful, but she hadn’t felt fierce then. With this sword in her hand, the power of it thrumming gently through her, she _does_. Stone warrior forgotten, she shifts the sword around so it’s hidden behind her and sets off to find Alistair.

He’s sitting in front of the fire, fingers twisting a small gold coin around and around them absently. His lucky coin. He’d told her he’d found it just before his very first fight with darkspawn as a Grey Warden. He’d seen it glinting in the dirt, bent over to pick it up, and heard a whizzing noise and a thwack. When he stood, a darkspawn arrow was still shivering with the force that had embedded it into the tree just behind him. That coin, he said, had saved his life. She kind of loves that coin.

When he sees her there, he smiles warmly, pats the ground next to him, and holds out his arms in invitation to cuddle against him. She almost drops the sword and accepts the offer, but her fingers don’t seem to want to let go.

“If I wanted to learn to use a sword… would you teach me?”

He looks puzzled. “I would.” He obviously has more to say, but he’s biting it back until he sees where she’s going with this.

She just raises her eyebrows. “You _would_. But…?”

He grins sheepishly. “Well. You know. Glorious goddess of war and death that you are… I don’t think you could keep anything other than a wooden practice sword in the air long enough to be _able_ to learn to do anything with it. It's a lot harder to hold _right_ than to just pick up, you know."

With an eager smile that belies the casual gesture, she brings the sword out from behind her with one hand. “What if I had a special sword, made specially for someone like me?”

He rises quickly and takes her wrist, drawing the sword toward him to examine, then gives a stunned laugh. “ _That’s_ why I thought it was a piece of crap. This is incredible…” And then he steps back slowly, eyes roaming over her. His voice comes out an uneven whisper. “Maker preserve me.”

She can’t keep an awkward burst of laughter from breaking the moment. “What?” she demands, still just standing there.

“Ask me again later.”

She hesitates, an attempt to pry the answer from him on the tip of her tongue, and then bites it back. “Okay. Will you teach me?”

He looks caught off guard. “Now?”

“When else? At camp, every night. Will you teach me?”

“Um, yeah. Of course.”

To begin with, he teaches her simply posture. How to hold the sword, how to stand when holding a sword.

“No, more like…” He makes a gesture with his whole body, but she doesn’t grasp how it’s different than what she’s already doing. Finally he laughs, and there’s something just a little naughty in it that makes her think of all the kissing that they have _not_ been doing lately. “You’re lucky. You know how Ser Loren taught me stand right? By whacking the backs of my knees with the flat of his sword when I wasn’t doing it right.” He drops his sword in the dirt and makes to move behind her. “In his defense, if he’d used the method I’m about to use on you, they’d probably have thrown him out of the Order for inappropriate contact with little boys.”

She tries to turn with him, heart accelerating fiercely, mouth opening to question him, but he stills her with a hand on each shoulder. “Be still. And relax. I’m just going to show you how to stand.”

And then he pulls her back against him, shifting slightly to adjust for their difference in heights. She can hear him whispering something just under his breath, too softly to catch.

She can’t help herself. He’s already told her a dozen times standing across from her to relax, and she was trying before, but with him pressed up against her like this, she cannot to save her life unwind the tension of awareness pulsing through her. She isn’t surprised when he chuckles roughly. “No. You’d still be getting a whack with Ser Loren’s sword if he were here. You know, if he could spare a moment in the merciless beating he’d be applying to me for touching a mage like this.” As though to demonstrate exactly what he means by, “like this,” he draws his hands up across her hips, up along her ribcage, and for one frantic moment she thinks he’s going to touch her breasts before his hands draw back, up over her shoulder blades and then down along her arms. “ _Relax_.” And then his hands are in her hair, removing the pins. When his fingers finally slide along the base of her skull, angling her head to the side, just before his lips descend on her neck, she finally catches enough of his whispered words to recognize them. “ _You are the fire at the heart of the world_.” It’s the Chant of Light. From the Canticle of Transfigurations, one of her favorite parts. She’d heard Cullen sing this very verse once. She’d lain awake in bed thinking about it for weeks, ashamed of the way the hungry thing inside her had twisted and tugged at words he’d sung in faithfulness and devotion. This is a thousand times more torturous, because, while this may be some kind of act of devotion, his lips reverent against her neck, she doesn’t think that she’s imagining that it isn’t meant for the Maker. Between his words and his hands and his lips, the tension in her cracks. She becomes a boneless, liquid thing.

His breath is warm and soft in her ear, his voice smug. “That’s probably a little too relaxed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said a rating change was coming in this chapter, but it's actually the next chapter. But that's okay because I'm posting them simultaneously.


	22. Courage Equal to Desire

The landscape changes slowly, day by day, more and more trees springing up as the rolling green hills become sharper and more jagged, until the night they make camp near the base of a waterfall. Right by the cascade of water, in the bluish twilight, the world is all emerald leaves and sparkling droplets. It is a new and different beauty from any Solona has seen so far. The noise, somehow both crashing and susurrant, mutes everything, so that she startles when she realizes someone is standing a few feet away, watching her, until the figure comes into focus through the haze and she can see that it’s only Alistair. Every night since she came to him with it, he’s taught her how to use her sword. He says every good sword should have a name, but she wasn’t sure what would be appropriate until Sandal ran a curious finger over the pommel and then grinned at her and said, simply, “Spellweaver.” Sometimes, like that first night, Alistair uses the teaching as an excuse to press his body against hers, but he devotes enough sincerity to their lessons that she knows he doesn’t think it’s just a joke. In truth, she’s as grateful for the nights he spends pressed to her, lips on her column of her throat, on the lobes of her ear, as she is for the earnest instruction, because it’s the only time anymore that he really touches her. She misses his lips crashing hard against hers with a terrible ache, but she trusts him. He’ll tell her what’s going on in his head soon enough. She hopes.

Her tunic is growing slowly damp even beneath the metal of her armor from the fine spray coming off the waterfall, making the chill breeze bite harder, but she’s too enthralled with this place to move yet. Standing in the mist of this silvery green gloom is too peaceful to feel much anxiety about anything. She smiles at Alistair as he approaches. “It’s beautiful.”

“Mmm. Ridiculously beautiful. Way too beautiful.”

She rolls her eyes at him when she sees where his gaze is fixed. “You aren’t even looking at it.”

“I’m looking at you.” 

“Good thing you're so fond of cheese.”

He ignores her mockery. When his hands move the back of her neck to draw her into a kiss, she expects it to be as brief as all the others he’s given her recently. It isn’t.

It’s almost startling in its desperation. When he does pull away, she finds herself leaning into him dizzily. “Oh. Oh, hi.” She realizes he’s staring at her, his lips parted as though about to say something, but nothing is coming out. “Alistair? Are you okay?”

He draws in a deep breath. “All right. I guess I really don’t know how to ask you this.”

She feels a shivering sensation where his hands hold her neck. “Are you trembling?”

“No!” He pulls his hands away, balling them into fists at his side defensively. “I mean yes. I mean… I’m a little nervous, sure. Not that this is anything bad or frightening or… well, yes.” He groans. “Oh, how do I say this?” His hands rise to gesticulate randomly. “You’d think it would be easier, but every time I’m around you, I feel as if my head’s about to explode. I—I can’t think straight.”

She can’t help laughing at the adorableness of his agitation. “Oh? Thanks a lot.”

He groans again. “I don’t mean it like _that_. I mean… all right, let me start over.” He moves closer again, reaching down and lacing the fingers of both hands through hers. They are still trembling a little. “Here’s the thing: being near you makes me crazy, but I can’t imagine being without you. Not ever.” He draws a slow breath, steadying himself. “I don’t know how to say this another way. I want to spend the night with you. Here, in the camp. Maybe this is too fast. I don’t know but… I know what I feel.”

She’s caught entirely off guard. Not that she hasn’t come to feel a certain confidence in Alistair’s feelings for her—he’s always there for her, always. Even with all of her uncertainty about whether or not he _should_ , she can’t question anymore how much he _does_ care for her. But she’d pretty much given up on the possibility of the stubborn man settling for anything other than whatever ideal he had conjured up in his imagination that their first time together was supposed to be. She was beginning to think that he would _never_ find anything quite “perfect” enough.

The span of days piling on top of one another that they’ve spent walking across this country, back and forth, has blurred the passage of time, until she doesn’t even know anymore how long it’s been since she left Kinloch Hold. She hardly remembers her life without Alistair in it. She hardly remembers not wanting him. And now, here he is, asking for this as though she would be doing him a kindness, as though it isn’t exactly what she’s laid awake, alone, wishing for. “You want to spend the night? Are you sure?”

He brings her hand up to his lips. “I wanted to wait for the perfect time, the perfect place… but when will it be perfect?” His voice breaks and comes back heavy with the weight of grief and gratitude. “If things were, we wouldn’t even have met. We sort of… stumbled into each other, and despite this being the least perfect time, I still found myself falling for you between all the fighting and everything else. I really don’t want to wait anymore. I’ve… I’ve never done this before. You know that. I want it to be with you… While we still have the chance. In case…”

She twists her fingers in his grip to press them against his lips in a silencing motion. “Don’t talk like that. There will always be time later.” She says it as though willing it so makes it so.

He kisses her fingers again before pulling them away. “Will there? You don’t know that. I don’t know that. I’d like to be able to say I threw caution to the wind at least once.”

He speaks as though he is the one convincing her of something. As though she might possibly have said no. She smiles shyly at him. “Very well. If you’re sure that’s what you want…”

He smiles back just as shyly. “I think so. I hope so.”

He takes her hand and leads her back to his tent. She realizes that he must have been planning this, because his tent is decidedly farther away from everyone else’s than usual. And the opening is angled away from the fire at the center of camp. Hoping against hope that no one is looking their way or watching, she crawls into his tent as rapidly as she can. She knows perfectly well how his lips can burn away every shred of shame and dignity she has, but right this moment the idea that any of their companions might see her entering his tent and know what they’re about to do is so mortifying that she almost loses her nerve.

She doesn’t count on how awkward it will be when Alistair scrambles in behind her, obviously hoping not to be seen as well, and they sit in the dark silently. She conjures a small magelight, and they stare at each other hesitantly. To have something to do with her hands, and also because she knows how he feels about her hair, she begins to unpin it.

Finally, he speaks, a mischievous smirk spreading across his features. “You know, you never did tell me whether or not you’ve ever _licked a lamppost in winter_ before.”

She looks up at him with wide eyed innocence, overplaying it just a little. “There are no lampposts in the Circle. And winter is a pretty meaningless concept. It’s cold, dim, and miserable pretty much year round. But the apprentices are allowed to make these strands of fairy lights for Satinalia. It’s a bit festive.”

“You minx, you’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

Round eyes blink once, twice. “Say what?”

She can see a blush grace his cheeks. “Have you… have you ever spent the night with anyone before?”

She widens her eyes even further still. “Well, of course. There were usually at least twelve girls in the female apprentice dormitory.”

He groans. “Is this what trying to talk to me is like? Is this your revenge? Maker, _fine_ , have you ever had sex before?” His cheeks burn fully red now.

She laughs, finally letting the innocent charade drop. In her anxiety, she is willing to talk about herself, her past, anything to fill the silence and delay the moment when she actually has to _do_ something. She’s rather terrified that she isn’t going to be any good at _doing_ anything. “Alistair, the only time I’ve ever even been _kissed_ by anyone other than you was part of this ridiculous game that Neria made up involving spinning an empty lyrium philter that she got from some templar and having to kiss whoever it pointed at. I ended up kissing this apprentice named Jada. She was a year older than me. She was actually quite pretty. All blond curls and dimples.” She winks at him. “What can I say, I guess I’ve always been partial to a pretty blond.”

“Wait—“ Alistair’s smirk is indecently intrigued, “did you actually kiss a girl, like, a proper Orlesian kiss?”

“ _I_ mostly just stood there, my mouth open in shock. _She,_ as I recall, was rather _spectacularly_ good at ‘proper Orlesian kissing.’”

Her hair is finally free, and that smirk is still on his face. He reaches for her. Her lips meet his eagerly, the fire racing through her at his touch as fast as ever. But he doesn’t pull away when it begins to consume her, when little noises that should be embarrassing start to rise from her throat. Instead, his lips move to that spot on her neck that makes her writhe and moan, and he pushes her back gently onto his bedroll, his body moving over hers. His fingers are trembling so badly when he reaches for the buckles on her armor that she isn’t sure he’ll manage. When she tries to help, she realizes her own are trembling as well. He brushes her fingers aside. “I want to do it.” His voice is quiet, embarrassed again, but determined.

While he’s working slowly at her buckles, she slides her hands beneath his tunic, along the ridges of his chest. His breath hitches but he keeps working at freeing her from her armor. When her fingers reach the rough scar where he was wounded in Redcliffe Village, when she didn’t heal him right, she sits up so suddenly that her forehead hits his chin.

“Ow! What—“

“Maker, is it really that bad?” She ignores his dismay, fingers tugging at his clothing to expose his chest. She brings the ball of light closer to examine the scar. Raised and red, it runs across the better part of his left side. “Andraste's ass, Alistair! _I_ did that to you! You never even complained about it. I can’t believe—I’m so sorry—“

“Solona, _you_ most certainly didn’t do that. I happen to have been there. It was definitely a walking corpse with a mace, not you. What _you_ did was keep me from dying. And, you know, I like to think it’s kind of attractive in a manly, rugged sort of way.” He says the last part half embarrassed, half hopeful.

She grins at him, gathers the bottom of his tunic in her hands, and begins to pull upward. “Well then, I’ll need to get a good view to see if you’re right.”

He lifts his arms to let her pull it off, then gives her a bashful grin when he reemerges from it, shirtless.

This is, technically, the third time she’s seen him without a shirt, but given she was worried he was bleeding to death the first time and could see nothing but his wound when she looked at him, and she was very busy _not_ looking at him when they were getting the Sacred Ashes, it feels like the first. She can’t help grinning back, though she raises an eyebrow skeptically. “I don’t know about manly and rugged… I’d go more with…” She presses a soft, open mouthed kiss to the top of his scar and sighs, the veneer of impassiveness melting away entirely as she allows herself just this once to indulge in the ridiculousness she usually teases him for. “…golden statue of some god-like hero from legend.”

His grin brightens as his fingers find their way back to the buckles of her armor, and then, bit by bit, hardens into a look of intensity. Once he has her armor off, he moves slowly, every motion questioning if what he’s doing is okay, as he tugs the hem of her tunic upwards and then off. He pushes her back into the bedroll again, delicately, as though she’s something fragile. His eyes rove over her. “And you are an alabaster idol that I would gladly waste away in front of, worshipping.”

She laughs—it is too much. “And _we_ are ridiculous.”

“No ruining the moment, you cynical, hard-hearted vixen.”

There’s more laughing and more kissing and then she has to help him remove her breast band, the way it wraps multiple times around her and tucks into itself beyond his coordination now. He just sits there staring at her, his fingers ghosting over his skin as though he’s afraid to really touch her, but leaving trails of flame all the same.

She groans. “Are you going to kiss me again, or just stare at me for the rest of the night?”

His smile is wicked. “Your wish is my command, my lady.” And he lowers his mouth to her breast. She’d never have guessed it would feel the way it feels. Like that spot on her neck. Like there’s a path directly from his mouth to the place between her legs, and she's hardly aware of how she's shifting and trembling under him. She’s still half afraid he’s going to suddenly stop at some point, because that’s what Alistair always does, but when his mouth pulls away it’s only to tell her to lift her hips so he can pull off her leggings. She doesn’t realize he’s taken her smalls with them until she feels the blanket beneath her bare skin.

As bad as she wants him, she can’t help a wave of embarrassment that causes her already closed legs to clamp even harder together. It’s never occurred to her what an embarrassing body part the space between her legs is before. Maker, she hopes he doesn’t expect her to let him _look at it_. She’ll die of humiliation.

With a look of concern on his face, he lowers his lips to her, holding himself up off of her body. “You know that if you change your mind at _any_ point, you can say so, right? And I won’t be mad or anything. You do know that?”

She relaxes a little under him. “Of course I know that. Not that it matters. There’s nothing I want more than you.”

He laughs, mouth moving to her ear. “Good…” He shifts, one knee bumping and nudging awkwardly at the two of hers still pressed close until she parts them, and then the other knee joining the first, spreading her legs further. “You should know that, even though I’ve never actually done this before, I did spend six months living with the Grey Wardens of Ferelden. Antivan whores are probably cleaner than what came out of those mens’ mouths. So I’m pretty sure I have a fairly clear _theoretical_ grasp of how to…. um, do this, you know, _properly_. Er, so you, uh, _enjoy_ it. I hope.” With that, he nips her ear and dips his fingers between her thighs simultaneously.

Her whole body reels from the contact, shuddering, shivering. He’s a little hesitant, a little unsure, but she’s so eager that every touch is almost excruciating in it’s sweetness. After a few gently fumbling strokes, he evidently figures out what he’s looking for, and a finger begins circling one particular spot, and _oh_. She’s only ever even touched herself there a handful of times—sleeping in a room full of other girls doesn’t exactly encourage that kind of exploration—but she’s never made herself feel anything remotely like this. It is electric. His breath is warm at her ear. “Like that?”

All that comes out when she tries to respond is an unintelligible whimpering.

She feels him smile against her neck. “Can I take that as a yes?”

She gasps. “ _Sweet fucking Andraste, Alistair,_ ** _yes_**.”

He laughs, obviously well pleased.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been laying there, reveling in the sensations, when everything inside of her begins to twist in on itself, her breath coming in shorter and sharper pants, until Alistair does the last thing she ever expected her sweet, blushing Chantry Boy to do. He whispers roughly in her ear, “Are you going to come for me?”

And just like that, the world splinters out of existence, replaced by something excruciatingly sweet, so much more intense than the sighing climaxes she’s brought herself to that she can hardly believe this is the same thing.

When she comes back to herself, the tent is dark, the light she was sustaining extinguished. His hand that isn’t between her legs is pressed over her mouth, and he’s laughing. When she can, she conjures the magelight again. He finally removes the hand that’s over her mouth.

“I wasn’t actually going to _announce_ this step in our relationship _to everyone_ , but, you know, that works.”

She would be more embarrassed if she weren’t still riding out the lingering, trembling throes of ecstasy, but a little makes it through even in this state. She knows that she’s going to wish the ground would open and swallow her when she has to leave this tent in the morning. “What did I say?”

“It was more like scream than _say_. It sounded like maybe, ‘Fuck, fuck, please, Alistair!’ I didn’t know you had such a dirty mouth.”

“And I didn’t know you could do _that_. I’m actually kind of angry at you for holding out on me for so long now.” And then she takes in the way his hair is standing on end, the way her whole body is tingling, the faint smell of ozone in the air.

And she bolts upright. “ _Alistair_ _!_  Maker, why didn’t you say—why didn’t you—I could have—you should have _stopped_ me—“

His hands come up between their bodies defensively. “What?! I don’t understand; _Solona_ , what’s _wrong_?”

“ _Alistair_.” Her voice is desperate. “My _magic_. I haven’t lost control since I was _ten_. What if I’d _hurt_ you?”

“Oh.” A hand reaches to run through his hair, sticking up every which way in an entirely different fashion than his usual perfect tousle, and he laughs with relief. “That. It’s fine. It was nothing. Really, it was a tiny spell. It didn’t even hurt. I mean, you know… it was kind of… _shocking_ …” He has that cheesy grin on his face and that delighted look in his eye that says, “Get it? Get it?”

She doesn’t smile back. “Seriously? A pun? A bad pun about the fact that I just _shot a bolt of lightening at you_? Maker, I’m so stupid. I should have known—I _did_ know—I _knew_ that my magic ruins _everything_ and I still—“

“Solona! Shut up.” His voice is rough, all the teasing gone. When her eyes meet his, their is an indignant anger there. “Don’t. Don’t ever say anything like that to me again. Don’t you get it? _No one_ gets to say things like that about you where I can hear them. Not even you.”

She feels tears welling up in her eyes. “But don’t _you_ get it? We can’t—how can we—when I could _hurt_ you?”

She can see him weighing his options before he speaks. Whatever it is he’s about to say, he’s worried that saying it will upset her more than this has.

Finally, quietly, it comes out. “You can’t hurt me.”

“Of course I could! Look at what I just did!”

“Yeah, but I let you. Because I trust you. Even if you don’t trust yourself. And I’m pretty sure that you trust me enough that I can point out that I could have done an annulment to cancel it out. I could have done a cleansing. I could have silenced you. I’m not even going to say I _could_ have done a Smite, because I would _never, ever_ do that to you. I’m pretty sure that _you_ trust _me_ enough that I can point all of that out without being afraid that you’re going to suddenly look at me and think, ‘Templar,’ again, because that would seriously, _seriously_  kill me if you did that _now_. And here’s why I’m _not_ a templar, and never could have been a proper one. Because I don’t _want_ to silence you. I don’t want to treat your magic like it’s an inconvenience or some sin your supposed to atone for or like it’s something about you that’s broken but that I’m generously willing to overlook. It isn’t any of those things. It’s a perfect piece of the perfect whole that is you, and _you_ are what I want. _Y_ _ou_ , exactly as you are. You, fierce and maybe dangerous—but I’m willing to take that chance. You, the most beautiful thing in the world. Ask me what I was thinking that night when you asked me to teach you to use a sword. When I told you to ask me again later.”

It takes her a moment to find her broken voice. “What were you thinking?”

“That I was kind of joking when I said it the first time, but you really did look like a goddess. One of those pagan triple goddesses, you know, innocence and birth, hope and life, desire and death. That if it weren’t for Loghain and that pesky archdemon, I’d happily forsake the Maker and build a temple to worship you in and forget everything but—“

She silences him with her lips frantic against his, her arms around his neck pulling him closer. She feels as though he’s cracked open her soul, and she thought she knew what to expect when she looked in behind him, but instead in that moment she sees herself as he sees her, and it is beautiful. She doesn’t know which she wants more: _him_ or to give herself _to_ him. She wants it all with a desperation she’s never felt before.

The noise he makes agains her mouth is such a combination of relief and desire, it shoots through her with as much fire as the way he bites at her bottom lip.

The flame inside her burns even fiercer than before now that it knows better what it aches for. Her resistance gone, she laughs. “You’re right. I was wrong. _You_ are the one who’s going to kill _me_ …”

His grin is full of eagerness, full of self-satisfaction, full of adoration. “Oh, just you wait. It gets better. At least, they all said women like the next bit best…”

The further back he moves, the more she realizes that, even though she doesn’t understand what he’s planning, Maker, it really is going to involve him _looking_ at her there. Which is even worse now than earlier because she’s sticky and so wet she can feel it dripping down between her thighs. When he pushes at her knees, trying to part them, she covers her face with her hands and squeezes her thighs together tighter.

She can feel his eyes on her face. “Are you being shy _now_? After you’ve screamed my name so loud the Empress in Orlais probably heard you?”

“What? It’s a perfectly normal reaction to—you’re trying to _look_! That’s weird. It isn’t meant to be _looked_ at.”

He brings himself forward again until he can press soft kisses to her lips. “Solona. Look at me.”

She spreads her fingers apart but doesn’t move her hands yet.

“Do you trust me?”

“You know I do.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“What? No! Why—“

“Then let me show you—you’ll like it. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it. They said—well, and I’m getting _you_ , and all you’re getting is me. You deserve something extra. To even things out.”

She finally moves her hands, mostly so that she can pinch his side. “That’s complete rubbish, you know.”

He seems to realize that the best way to keep her pliant is to keep her too aroused to protest, so before he moves back again, he slips a hand between her legs and works it there for a moment, until her hips begin to move with his fingers. And then he pulls away, drawing quickly down her body as she makes whimpering noises of displeasure that his fingers have left their place. Before she realizes what’s happening, there’s something warm and wet moving against her, and he was right, it is even better than what he was doing with his fingers. When she realizes it’s his tongue, she almost thinks it’s so wrong that she ought to stop him— _who does that? Do people really do that?? I thought Neria was just trying to make me blush_ _when she said_ —but in reality there is nothing in the world that could convince her to ask him to stop _now_. When she loses herself, she bites down on her forearm to try to keep from crying out again.

When she regains her sense enough to recast the light, Alistiar comes up grinning, hair no more electricity-tousled than it already was, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know, that didn’t really muffle the screaming that much. It’s okay, though. I like it when you scream. You can do that every time you come, if you want.”

She flutters a hand weakly through the air, making an indistinct noise of protest before sighing contentedly.

“I shall assume that was your way of saying, ‘Yes, my dearest, whatever you desire.’”

“Wow,” is all she manages to respond with. A part of her feels that she could very easily snuggle down into his blankets and immediately drift away into blissful sleep. She opens one eye to grin wickedly at him. “That was lovely. Thanks. Good night.”

“Good night? Good night? You evil, cruel woman.” He stares at her in teasing incredulity until a grin as wicked as hers spreads over his face. “Fine, yes, go on, sleep.” He slips his hands between her legs and begins that motion again. For the briefest instant she contemplates pretending to ignore it, but within moments her body overrides her, already forgetting how satiated she just was and beginning to burn again.

When the pace of her writhing begins to quicken, he stops suddenly, pulling away his hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. You were trying to sleep, weren’t you? How rude of me. Please, by all means, sleep.”

“No! I don’t want to sleep.” Her body shifts restlessly.

“No? What do you want?”

She doesn’t know what to say for a long moment. Finally, pushing her face against his neck, she just whispers, “You.”

He loses his balance getting his trousers off, nearly collapses on top of her, making them both laugh, and then he's moving forward and she's shifting back, both awkward and uncertain again, until he’s over her, one hand fumbling between them. Finally he looks into her eyes and hesitates, the hand between them coming up to stroke softly along her cheek. “You know that… that this is probably going to hurt, right? Are you _sure_ this is… okay?”

She wishes she could tell him she loves him. The fact that even now he would, in an instant, stop makes her heart swell. But it’s probably too soon for that particular word. He hasn’t actually said it yet. Everything but—he’s said he cares for her, that he’s beguiled with her, that he thinks she’s perfect. But he’s never actually said that word, and she’s too afraid to be the first one. So she just says, “Yes.”

It does hurt. More than she expects. It’s also more difficult that she expects, complicated by the fact that, no matter how hard she tries to keep still, her body keeps unconsciously flinching away from the pain. And every time Alistair realizes he’s hurting her, he pulls away. By the time he is completely within her, she’s bitten her lip so hard trying to keep him from realizing how much it hurts her that she can taste the metallic sharpness of blood. Her face is buried in his neck, the tears that she can’t quite keep from coming out disguised by sweat.

He’s still within her, but his face is shifting against her, the arm that isn’t supporting him over her pulling at her shoulder. He wants to kiss her, but she doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want him to see that she’s cried.

“Lona?”

“Uh huh?”

Immediately he can tell from her voice that something is wrong. The hand on her shoulder pushes more insistently, his voice rising. “Solona?”

She lets the light flicker out. When he tries to pull out of her, she moves her legs to lock around his hips faster than he can pull away.

“It’s okay,” she says soothingly, her fingers stroking through his hair. “I promise. It’s okay.”

He’s still, holding himself stiffly above her. “Why didn’t you tell me it was that bad?”

“Um… because you would have stopped? And I didn’t want you to?”

“If it was that bad, then I should have stopped!”

“Right. And I should have stayed a virgin forever. And when they asked me on my death bed why I’d never taken a lover, I could have told them, ‘Well, I tried once, but, you know, it hurt.’”

“Solona, I’m serious.”

“Ooh. Mark this one down in your calendar. The day that Alistair was serious and Solona refused to be.”

“Sol—“

“I healed it a bit. I’m a mage. I can do that. It’s not so bad now. Honest.” To prove the point, she rolls her hips against him.

He lets out a broken sounding groan. “I’m trying to—you can’t just—“

“On the bright side, I absolutely promise not to be disappointed if you don’t, you know, _last_ very long. But really, it’s not so bad now. Go ahead.” She rolls her hips again.

She can feel him sliding his arms further under her, gathering her to him, but she doesn’t realize he’s going to flip them until she suddenly finds herself pulling her legs out from beneath him. “There,” he says simply.

“There what?”

“I can’t… you know, enjoy myself… if I’m worried about hurting you. Now I don’t have to worry.”

“But…” Her voice is small, unsure. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Uh, honestly, it doesn’t really matter. If you just, you know, _move_ … I promise, I’m not going to make this difficult for you.” He scrubs one hand over his flaming cheeks as though he might rub the blush away.

Feeling foolish, she begins to move her hips against him, but the sounds he makes when she does quickly build her confidence. As she undulates against him, she begins to catch glimpses of the pleasure this is supposed to involve, dulled by the throb and tenderness, but there. And then his hands are gripping her hips bruisingly tightly, pulling her hard against him and holding her there as he cries out.

Even though she knows that the world is full of horrible things, darkspawn and archdemons and completely unhinged usurpers of crowns, in that moment she feels a kind of perfection in the entirety of it, every blessed thing and every moment that have brought her to this one.

“Sweet Andraste,” he breathes, rising up to kiss her. She can taste the foreignness of _herself_ on his tongue. It isn’t exactly disgusting, but it’s… different. It seems decidedly ungrateful not to kiss him back though.

He pulls her with him when he lies back, so that she’s lying across his chest, his fingers stroking through her hair, half getting in the way as she braids it to keep it from strangling them both in the night. They lie there silently for a while, their breathing slowing and synchronizing, until she jolts upright on his chest. Maker, but is she _stupid_.

“Alistair!”

He reacts instantly to her panic. “What? What’s wrong? Are you okay? _Shit_. Did I hurt you?”

How is it that she’s thought about this a thousand times and never once thought about _this?_ “I didn’t… I don’t have… In the Circle there were draughts… to prevent… um, _complications_ … er, babies. Alistair, I don’t have any. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so stupid—“ Her voice is growing more frantic as the words tumble out of her mouth.

“Solona.” His voice is quiet but firm enough to break through her rambling. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know. I should have. I should have known, because you’ve never had a chance for _anyone_ other than me to tell you much of _anything_ about being a Grey Warden, and I’m terrible at this. I… I messed up how I told you about the Calling. I know I did, so don’t pretend I didn’t.” He moves the two of them until they’re laying on their sides, facing each other. He smooths her hair back from her face with one hand. “It’s… it’s the taint. It’s pretty rare for one Grey Warden to be able to have a child with some who _doesn’t_ have the taint. Really rare, actually. I’m not even… I’m not even sure _that’s_ possible. It’s pretty much impossible for two Grey Wardens to have a child together. I’m sorry.” His voice is thick with shame. “You shouldn’t have been told like… like this.”

The rising panic subsides, leaving something numb in its wake.

“It’s okay.” Her voice is soft. She settles against him again, cheek pressed against his heart. “I’m a mage, anyway. It isn’t like I’d ever have been allowed to keep a child if I did have one. It’s better this way.”

He keeps stroking her hair. “It’s not fair.” His voice is softer than the breeze rustling the leaves outside his tent. “I’ve always known nothing is fair, and I thought I was okay with that. I _was_ okay with it when it was just about me. I got over the expectation that anything was ever going to be fair the day I arrived at the Chantry. Everything that came with being a Warden seemed like a more fair trade than I'd ever expected. The Calling, the taint. The fact that I’d never live a normal life, do normal things. At least I was free. But you make me wish… that everything _wasn’t_ so unfair. _You_ don't deserve…”

She turns her face until it’s buried in his neck. “It’s okay. You’ve already given me everything I want.” She sighs and then breathes him in slowly, the scent that is uniquely his. “All I want is you.” Eventually, they fall asleep tangled together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters at once today. Merry Christmas!
> 
> I'm kind of embarrassed about this. I don't think I've ever even _written_ smut before; I've _definitely_ never shared it. I was going for um, tasteful smut? (Is that a thing? Or is that an oxymoron?) I considered editing it out to keep the story teen rated, but I think, given that this story is very much about exploring the characters, it's _relevant_. Or maybe that's just what everyone who bothers to try to justify their smut says.


	23. Mortal, Guilty, But to Me the Entirely Beautiful

She wakes to the feeling of fingers brushing stray wisps of hair away from her face. She shifts her head to smile at Alistair, feeling vulnerable and shy, which she supposes really is a bit foolish at _this_ point.

He leans in to press the softest kiss to the tip of her nose. “You are the most beautiful sight anyone could ever possibly wake up to. I tried to tell you that once before, you know. I don’t think you heard me then.”

She smirks at him. “I hear everything you say. When did this supposedly happen?”

“The Chantry in Redcliffe. I said, ‘How is it that you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, ever with blood matted in your hair?”

She stills, her eyes moving over him with adoration. “ _That’s_ what you said? I did hear part of it. It was only the part about having blood in my hair though.”

His hand moves from her hair down to her bare hip where his fingertips move in a repetitive pattern, his eyes following. “You know, according to all the Chantry sisters, I should have been struck by lightening by now.”

“Mm. That so?” Her voice is almost normal even though the sensation of his fingers makes it hard to breathe properly.

“Yep. Lightening first, then the end of civilization as we know it.” His eyes move back to hers as he gives her a grin of pure wickedness. “I’m a bad, bad man.”

Just when she thinks he’s going to slide his hand forward, between her legs, he pulls it away. His eyes flicker to the flap of his tent. “You do realize the rest of our little party here is going to talk, right? They do that.”

She sits, stretches, then glares through the tent as though she can see those she’s issuing her threat against straight through it. “First smart comment and I feed them to the darkspawn.”

His hands are suddenly on her ribs, pulling her down to him as he leans forward to kiss her. “See! This is why I love you!”

Before she can respond, before she can even really register his words, his lips are on hers. By the time his lips are trailing down her neck, coherent thought is too far gone to tell him that she loves him back as she slides on leg over his lap and settles herself on him with only a slight wince.

Later, when their gasping pants are beginning to slow and she starts to pull off of him, he rises up and wraps his arms around her, holding her against him. “Before we go, have I told you that I love you?”

She can’t help laughing at the teasing tone of his voice, at how sweetly his face is buried against her breasts. “Alistair—“

“I did? Well, it won’t kill you to hear it again will it?”

She lowers her mouth to his ear. “I love you too.”

He lifts his head, his smile radiant, and presses a single, soft kiss to her lips. “See! Was that so hard?”

She runs her fingers through his hair, voice soft when she speaks. “No. Falling in love with you was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Trying not to would have been like trying to hold back my magic.”

 

 

They’ve been sharing a tent for only a handful of days when she wakes suddenly, the whole world quivering around her. It takes her a moment to realize it’s Alistair trembling. His face is drawn into a frown, breath ragged, but his eyes are still shut. A nightmare, then. She leans over him, trying to drawn him out of his terror without startling him. “Alistair.”

Still he twitches and gasps. She remembers something he said once about some Wardens being more sensitive to the dreams than others, and all she can think is that it is a miracle this is the first nightmare she’s witnessed. Maker knows she has enough of them herself. Of course _he_ is sensitive. How could Alistair be anything but? It never ceases to amaze her how a man built to step in front of monsters and yell threats can be such a fragile thing underneath it all. She tries again, the gentle whisper a breath louder. “Alistair.”

When his body bolts upright, she barely has time to move back enough to keep him from crashing into her face. His eyes are wide and wild, but when they lock on her face and his hand comes up to brush the backs of his fingers against her cheek, the touch is gentle as a gust of breath. Neither speaks until his breathing has slowed and his eyes have lost their confused fear. She can’t identify the emotion that replaces it until his eyes flicker away from hers, and he says, voice soft and heavy, “I’m sorry I woke you.” He’s ashamed.

She kisses the tip of his nose before gently pushing him back into the pillow and settling herself against him. “Don’t be. Waking up next to you is the best thing in the world. Even in the middle of the night.”

His body doesn’t relax as he lays stiffly beside her. She waits and waits, but he isn’t drifting back off to sleep again, so she props herself on her elbow and studies him. Sleep tousled and pouting, he looks like a child. And she suddenly remembers the lullaby Neria used to sing to her when she first came to the Circle. It was familiar even then, something her own mother had sung to her once, even longer ago, but she can’t remember her mother’s voice singing it now. She’d sung it herself many times to the youngest, most frightened new apprentices, years after Neria sang it to her. It’s all of their tear streaked faces she’s thinking of now as she combs her fingers through Alistair’s hair and sings quietly to him. She keeps singing as his pout softens into a sleepy smile, and still as he pulls her against his chest. “Maker, I love you,” he sighs into her ear before his breath evens into sleep.


	24. The Leaves Are Full of Voices

The Keeper unnerves her. The Dalish—the ones brave or stupid or confrontational enough to talk to her—say he’s centuries old. That he’s recovered the lost secret of elven immortality. Odd, she thinks, that he hasn’t bothered to share it with a single soul over all his long centuries. That is, perhaps, part of what unnerves her, but there’s more. Though his hair has retreated from the smooth surface of his scalp, he doesn’t look old. Aside from a few wrinkles around his eyes that suggest that he is a man who looks long and hard at things, there are almost no signs of age upon him at all. But more than any of that, when she looks at him, she doesn’t understand what drives him. There’s concern for his clan, she can see that plain as day. A genuine desire to protect, to serve. But there is something just under the surface of these admirable traits that she can’t quite catch a close enough glimpse of to recognize. She sees only enough to know that it is not what she might expect from a man with as much power as this one: ambition and avarice. Whatever it is he wants, it isn’t power or money or knowledge. But his desire is is strong enough that he would pay any price.

When he shows them the sick and wounded being treated by a single, exhausted looking elven healer and explains the curse that is falling like a shadow over his people, his face is easy enough to read. Guilt and sorrow. To be the person who is relied upon to keep everyone safe, to keep everything from falling apart—this Solona understands. Yes, they need this alliance with the elves, but even aside from that—how could she not be willing to do what she can put an end to so much suffering?

Even after they agree to help, only a handful of the Dalish treat them with any kindness, but neither the wariness nor the aggression offend her. Maybe it’s just that, as a mage, she’s always expected to be looked at by everyone outside the Circle as someone to be hated. Maybe it’s the way every time she says something polite and it’s returned with antagonism, Alistair looks like he’s barely restraining himself from punching someone in the jaw that’s filling her with a senseless swell of happiness, even though she doesn’t actually want him to make good on that. Whatever the reason, she isn’t angry with them. When, after telling her the story of the Dales, a group gathered around the fire chants as one, “We are the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit,” a wave of some emotion she can’t name chases itself in a chill over her skin, leaving behind an aching, admiring empathy for these proud, fierce, devoted people that is only a hair’s breadth from guilt.

She isn’t sure if she’s relieved or regretful when they leave the clearing where the Dalish are camped to search for the heart of the wolf that will end the elves’ curse and are quickly swallowed up by the forest whose myths are as numerous and as old as its trees.

 

 

The creature she’s kneeling in front of coughs, and a spatter of blood appears across the scales of her armor. Her stomach twists. Matted fur, dirty claws, yellowed fangs. This used to be a woman. Danyla. An elven woman, all slender grace and smooth skin. When Solona squeezes her eyes closed, an image flashes there of the woman’s husband, Athras, with his hands on a woman’s waist, bare in her strange Dalish armor. The woman gasps a ragged breath and hisses another spatter of blood onto the dirt, onto Solona. Senseless, needless misery, pain layered in lies. Between her conversation with the beast who calls himself Swiftrunner and this, she has no idea what’s going on, what she’s walking into, but she knows it isn’t as simple as the Keeper led her to believe when he showed her his suffering people and told her that all she needed to do to help him break the curse was bring him the heart of the white wolf Witherfang.

The beast that used to be a woman is begging for death. _Begging_. When did everything become so complicated? In Redcliffe and at the Circle, it was simple compared to this. Save the townspeople, save the arl, save the innocent mages and templars, save the child. Saving people is what she does. She latches onto it like a mabari, and she makes things work. But how does she save this woman? Is killing her really setting her free? Is it saving her? Her hand trembles as she pulls her dagger from its sheath at her thigh.

After, her breath keeps coming in sharper, faster gasps, and she can’t slow it as she stares at the blood coating the hand that holds the dagger. Blood is thicker than water. The sentiment is meaningless to a Circle mage, but it’s not just a cliché; it’s true enough she discovers now. She wipes her hand frantically in the dirt, small rocks scrapping at the skin, but she can’t get it off. Each gasp, fast on the heels of the last, makes her lungs ache. Faster and faster. She can’t stop it.

Wynne’s voice is unintelligible.

It is only when Alistair kneels next to her, taking her hand in his and tugging the corner of his tunic out from beneath his armor and gently wiping her hand clean that her breathing finally begins to normalize.

“There. You’re fine. See? It’s fine.” When her hands are finally free of blood, he presses a kiss to her palm before letting go.

She takes the woman’s scarf, carefully folding the red silk down into a square and tucking it beneath her armor to return to Athras.

How does anyone live with themselves in a world like this? How does anyone stay afloat in a storm like this?

It would be so easy to just fall apart. But there they all are, her companions, waiting for her to pick herself up. She gives Alistair a tremulous smile. “Don’t get bitten, okay? I like your hair the way it is.”

 

 

When Solona frees the fractured soul of what was once an elf from the glass phylactery-like prison where it has been trapped for centuries on end, it gifts her with a rush on knowledge that makes her wish she’d brought Spellweaver. But even with this gift of knowledge, she supposes maybe this wouldn’t be the best time to test out something so untried. The wolves are deadly—thank the Maker Wynne is there when one slices Zevran high on the thigh, blood pouring out with terrifying profusion. Wynne doesn’t even leave a scar.

The wolves are deadly because they hold nothing back. Wild as beasts, but desperate as only men can be. She understands why they fight the way they do.

What she doesn’t understand at first is what comes over Alistair in their lair. He is a feral, snarling thing, taking none of the care to not be bitten that she asked him to, hardly less beast than the creatures that fall one after the other on his sword. And then she sees how every step is made to place himself between her and danger, how every swing of his sword is to keep her safe, and she gets it. Every night as they have traveled deeper into the verdurous gloom of the forest, they have touched and tasted each other and fallen asleep in each others’ arms. She hadn’t know it was possible for him to be _more_ protective, more attentive, more adoring, but he is. That is exactly what this is, him standing there spattered with blood, savage, and somehow it is the sweetest thing she’s ever seen. It fills her with love, love, love, like lyrium, making her magic stronger, faster, better. He’s in front of her, but she’s right there with him, her magic following his every move. She feels capable of anything with him there. Together, like this, she thinks they are invincible.

 

 

The Lady of the Forest is the first creature they’ve met in this wild green place that Solona trusts. Oh, how the Chantry would reprimand her for daring such folly—trusting a spirit, of all things—but there is no guile in the serenity that flows from the Lady like a soft breath of fresh autumn air. She is the essence of something lovely and, yes, wild too, but so peaceful. Even Solona cannot fail to appreciate the beauty of the perfect swell of her breast, the perfect curve of her hip. She cannot help a jealous glance to check Alistair’s reaction, but his gaze is locked with the aggressive werewolf, the one called Swiftrunner, one hand of the pommel of his sword as they have a silent conversation. Their expressions are so identical they might be the same image seen through a warped mirror, and the expressions both say only this: _Harm her and I will destroy you_.

When the Lady explains that it was Zathrian, in his terrible vengeance, who created this curse to punish a group of humans who had done unspeakable things to his children, to his people, Solona understands what the dark thing she saw in the Keeper was: the agonizing, consuming desire to make right things that can never be right again. When they leave to ask Zathrian to come and speak to the Lady, outside of the peaceful aura of her presence, a heavy weight of regret settles over her. The way one wicked deed can breed so much more evil than itself seems inevitable. That Zathrian should be so full of rage as to be unable to pardon the descendants of the criminals so long removed from the crime seems too great a thing for her to budge.

It doesn’t surprise her when they emerge into what was once the great hall of this ruin the werewolves are living in and discover the Keeper, there waiting for them. It doesn’t surprise her when Zathrian refuses her when she tells him it’s time to let old grudges go. It doesn’t surprise her when all the Lady’s wise words to him fall on deaf ears. It doesn’t surprise her that he tries to attack them or that he won’t surrender until one of Zevran’s daggers is at his throat. He does surprise her in the end though. As he finally unravels the magic holding the people here in their cursed state, the same magic keeping him alive, and the years descend upon him in a rush, he makes a sound, a sigh of sweetest relief. It feels like a gift.


	25. The Distance Hidden in Those Cries

Half way to the gates of Orzammar in the west, the morning dawns so frigidly that Solona’s breath leaves soft, cloudy puffs in the air around her head. It seems appropriate for the first day of winter. Tucked under the blankets against Alistair’s warm side, it is a perfect Satinalia morning.

Her gift to herself today is that she does not wake Alistair. It’s rare enough that she wakes before him to begin with. Today she allows herself the indulgence of simply examining his features while he cannot laugh or blush, crinkle his nose in embarrassment or turn away. She takes in his lashes resting against his cheek, thick and longer even than they usually look, the nearly transparent blond tips visible in his stillness. The sharpness of his cheekbones, the defined angle of his jaw. His nose, which has been broken and not set properly at least twice she thinks. She loves that crooked nose. It is a hard thing then not to press a kiss to the tip of it, but she does not want to wake him yet.

She feels the weight of Muffin’s great head settle against her hip and finds him staring at her piteously as though to ask _why_ they must be so still and quiet. He hates being still and quiet in the morning. He’s been still and quiet all night. _Now_ it’s time to _play_. She takes his ear between her fingers and rubs a familiar pattern there with her thumb. _Poor dear_ , she thinks, he’ll likely end up with bald spots on both ears from all the rubbing one of these days. But for now he just pushes his head contentedly into her hand and licks her wrist.

She can feel Alistair stirring beside her. Instead of his customary morning kiss, he ignores her, leaning down across her until he’s nose to nose with Muffin. “You know, it’s Satinalia. If you didn’t get Morrigan anything, she’s going to think you don’t like her. Lucky for you, it isn’t too late. If you go look now, you can probably find a nice mouse to leave in her bed for her as a symbol of your affection.”

Muffin quirks an ear and tilts his head suspiciously.

“Really. Maker’s honest truth. You better go find something for her.”

Tail wagging eagerly, Muffin noses the flaps of the tent open and trots out.

Alistair laughs, his lips finally moving to hers. “There. Now I have you all to myself, _and_ Morrigan is going to get a dead mouse in her bed. _Best Satinalia ever_.”

Not entirely for the same reasons, she completely agrees. This is the best Satinalia she’s ever even imagined.

Instead of endless, interminable walking, they spend the day building up the fire and laughing. Solona digs out the presents she’s been squirreling away in Bodhan’s wagon but is genuinely surprised to discover that her companions all have gifts for her as well. Neria always scavenged or crafted something for her for Satinalia, but she’s never been given a gift by anyone else. The one that delights her most is Alistair’s: he gives her a sheath for Spellweaver that he had Varathorn, the Dalish craftsman, make specially for her.

In the evening, Bodhan arranges no fewer than a hundred candles in a circle around the camp and Morrigan lights them while Leliana sings something sweet and haunting. Solona thinks of that night months ago when Bodhan and Sandal first started to share their camp at night, of the warm contentment she had not known how to name. She knows now. Here, surrounded by everyone in the world who is dear to her, she feels like she’s come home.

 

 

She isn’t exactly looking forward to leaving behind her precious sun and stars when the impossibly large mechanized doors of the gateway to Orzammar thud closed behind her. The run-in with Loghain’s men outside has done nothing to improve her attitude towards this place either, despite the satisfaction of leaving them sulking like little girls about the fact that the wicked Wardens were being allowed in while they were not. This whole business of the dwarven King being dead means nothing good for them; she knows it with an absolute certainty that settles heavily in her gut. She’s half tempted to throw her hands in the air and say, “The Void with it, we don’t really need the dwarves, do we?” Because Maker only knows how long it’ll be before she sees the sky again. But _yes_ , they really _do_ need the dwarves. They need _everyone_. And even with _all_ of that help, they’re still going to need a generous endowment of blind luck, or the Maker’s blessing, or some card that she desperately hopes Eamon yet has up his sleeve, to first face Loghain and then defeat an archdemon after.

The path leading down to Orzammar is nothing like she expects. She has imagined a dank and narrow cavern, dimly lit. Instead, she’s reminded of nothing so much as paintings of the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux. They are standing in an impossible hallway, roof as high as the vaulted ceilings over the Sunburst Throne are depicted. The air itself is lit with a welcoming golden glow that seems to emanate from everywhere at once. Statues twice as tall as Alistair (which is staying something given that he’s already more than twice the height of a dwarf) line the hallway as she far as she can see, and here and there before them, a dwarf kneels solemnly. Hushed voices echo softly, incomprehensibly along the corridor. The irony does not escape her, that she should think of the palace of the Most Holy _here_ , in this place where the only things revered are the Stone itself and those who came before.

If the path surprises her, Orzammar stuns. It makes her wonder why people say dwarves new to the surface are afraid of falling into the sky. The roof of the cavern—the word hardly does justice to this space that houses an entire city—is so impossibly far above them, it might as well _be_ the sky. The opulence of the place is on a scale she’s never conceived of—solid gold statues with gems for eyes stare down at them from the perimeter, these evidently not even worthy of attention, unlike the statues of Paragons that lined the path. Every surface has some intricate pattern carved or inlaid into it. Everything gleams. Everything screams wealth.

Everything except Dust Town.

When the first small, grubby hand tugs at her armor, she pulls a gold sovereign from the purse at her belt without thinking, by impulse, and presses it into the child’s hand, a look of soft horror frozen on her face. When the second hand tugs, and Morrigan’s voice rings out her name sharply, Zevran interrupts, addressing Morrigan first—“Let me, my tactless beauty,”—before gently placing a hand on Solona’s wrist. “You cannot save them. No sum of gold will erase the marks on their faces; no fortune will buy them a caste. The only goal you will accomplish by emptying your purse is to cripple our ability to do what must be done. Defeating the archdemon is the only thing you can do for these people. Because if Thedas falls to the Blight, so too shall Orzammar. And as someone who has lived in the gutter, let me tell you, when things fall, the gutter is the first place to be crushed. So keep you gold. Do what you must here. And then leave, and do not look back.”

She cannot answer, cannot stop staring at the dirt smudged face of the child gripping her armor.

“If it would trouble you less, I could squish them and end their misery.”

The child glances at the golem with enormous eyes and runs off.

She makes a choked noise, not quite succeeding at a laugh. “That would actually trouble me more, Shale. What would trouble me less would be if we could find someone to blame for this cruel, obscene system and squish them.”

She bites her lip until it bleeds and clenches Alistair’s hand so hard that she knows she’s leaving stinging little half moons across the back, but he says nothing, and she takes no more sovereigns from her purse. She ignores any other hands that tug and keeps moving. Until she comes across something she cannot ignore.

“What the… what the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” Each repetition rises in volume until she can be heard even above the resounding shrieks of the infant laid on the table before them. One man is holding the baby’s face firmly still while with the other hand he presses a needle again and again against the tiny cheek. A second man restrains a sobbing woman, clearly the mother.

The one holding back the woman looks up at them. He takes the group in slowly, eyes lingering on Shale. Finally his eyes settle again on Solona. “Move on, Topsider. The marking of a casteless is none of your concern.” She suspects this response is actually rather polite compared to what he might have said to her if Shale weren’t there, inspiring him to make an effort at civility.

A part of her thinks she should say nothing. A part of her knows that this is a custom far older than herself in a culture she does not entirely understand, and therefore has little right to condemn. And yet she can’t stop herself. “But he’s a _baby_. You’re _hurting_ a **_baby_**. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The man with the needle straightens over the child and gives her a disinterested glance. “It is done.” Without another word, he packs up his belongings and the men walk away, the woman rushing forward and gathering her child into trembling arms the moment she is released. Solona can’t help noticing that she bears no mark on her face herself.

The infant is still crying, and Solona takes a step forward as though compelled. “I… I could try to help heal it. If you want. I know dwarves are resistant, but I… I could try.”

She is stunned when, immediately, eyes full of gratitude, the woman holds the infant out to her. As though it doesn’t even matter that she is a _mage_. As though all it has taken to gain this woman’s implicit trust is act like her son is a creature worthy of defending.

He’s the first baby Solona’s ever held. He’s a fragile, tiny thing. Her healing does little to ease the inflammation around the markings, but when the tiny fingers fist around her thumb, it might as well be her heart. When she makes nonsensical cooing noises at the baby, his mother, who gives her name as Zerlinda, bestows a look upon her that would, she thinks, be reserved on the surface for the Maker made flesh.

 

 

In pitch blackness, she’s thinking about how much she misses the stars, wondering if there’s ever before been anyone who knows what stars are in this vague, indeterminate place in the maze of the Deep Roads, when Alistair approaches with a candle. He kneels in front of her, brows scrunched with concern. “You’re sitting in the dark alone.”

She laughs and relaxes her muscles so that she flops backward, lying on the stone. Even though she knows there are no darkspawn near them, it takes an act of will to relax. Down here the darkspawn are always too close, even when they’re not close at all. “Your powers of observation amaze and delight!”

“Yes, well. I _do_ aim to amaze and delight. You aren’t really much of a challenge though.” He sets the candle aside and leans over her to nuzzle her cheek. “ _You_ are amazed and delighted by _everything_. What were you thinking about before I came?”

“Constellations.” With a series of small flicks of her wrist, she begins to recreate Sacrifice in tiny pinpricks of flame above their heads as best she can from memory. “We’ve been down here for almost a month. I miss you teaching me the constellations. I can’t wait to see the sky again.” She sighs.

Alistair’s head tips back to watch her magic. “That’s incredible.” After a long moment of quiet, he looks back down at her, smiling. “ _You_ are incredible. Have I told you that I love your magic?”

She just stares at him in adoration for a long moment before answering, “You’d have made the most rubbish templar.”

“I don’t know… I’d have been great at watching _you_. You know, standing in shadowy corners, leering creepily. Breathing heavily on your neck suddenly when you didn’t know I was there. That’s pretty much exactly what good templars do, right?”

She’s too distracted to respond with anything more than a laugh, shivering at the sensation of his hands sliding under her clothes, along the skin of her stomach. Once he’s got the buckles loose—a task he’s become even more adept at than she herself—she leans forward to allow him to pull the armor and the tunic beneath over her head and off, then shivers harder still when her back, bare but for her breast band, makes contact with the cold stone.

“I can teach you a constellation here.”

She laughs again, as much at the movement of his hands against her ribs as at his words. “There aren’t any stars here. Except,” she gestures above them, “the ones I already know.”

“I don’t need them to be here to teach you.”

She raises a incredulous brow in challenge. “Okay, then.”

“There are eighteen stars in the Maiden. The first one…” He spreads his hands slowly across her abdomen, considering how much space he has to work with. “…is here.” He leans forward to press a nibbling kiss to her rib.

She begins to laugh uncontrollably, pushing his face away and gasping. “Andraste’s tears, that tickles! You can’t really know the constellations that well! _How_ do you know that?”

His grin is pure bedevilment. “It drove the Revered Mother mad that I wouldn’t do any of the reading that was assigned to me, but I would read about… she called it ‘barbaric, pagan folderol.’ The more incensed she became, the harder I studied. The constellations—their common names and their proper, the names of the stars that make them, their stories—I liked it, but what I _really_ got a thrill out of was the way this vein above her eye twitched when she found me reading astronomy books. Absolutely apoplectic.” A sigh of contentment and a devious chuckle punctuate his story. “…Do you want me to stop?”

“Maker, no. Where’s the next star?”

Another cackle of laughter bursts from her when his lips close on the same point on the opposite rib.

When they finally make it back to where the others are camped, the dwarf who refused to be left behind while they went searching for his wife runs his eyes slowly up her leather leggings and then turns to Alistair with a naughty grin that she can’t help thinking would be more appropriate on the face of a twelve-year-old who has only just learned about sex than a grown man. “So, uh, what did you do with her legs?”


	26. Like Tunnels in a Labyrinth

Solona can’t stop the dry heaves that rack her body. Every time they nearly settle, her mind supplies another gruesome detail. Her own body, bloated and deformed nearly beyond recognition. Her own voice crooning some unintelligible, grotesque lullaby to dozens of hideous hurlock toddlers. This is the only kind of mother she will ever be fit to be. Broodmother. She feels like it is already there inside of her, like she is a chrysalis just waiting for the monster to burst forth, leaving her split open around it. Her stomach heaves again, though it’s long since rid itself of the last traces of anything to eject.

Finally, exhausted, she hangs limply against Alistair’s arm, her breathing labored. They are kneeling together, pressed to each other like spoons, her legs between his. His hand that isn’t supporting her from collapsing into the puddle of sick is rubbing slow circles against her back. When he realizes that she is done, he pulls her back more firmly against him.

“They won’t have you. I swear they won’t. I’ll put off my Calling. You only Joined six months after me. Our Callings won’t be far apart. I’ll ignore mine until yours. I’ll wait for you. Or I’ll go with you when you hear it, even if I haven’t heard mine yet. I’ll be there with you. I swear, I won’t let them have you. I swear.”

 

 

She’s sitting on the ledge that the golem Caridin jumped from hours ago, legs dangling over the edge, staring into the lava below as though the patterns of movement there might hold the answers she’s seeking. But if the answers are there, they are incomprehensible to her. What to do with the crown that wise, brave being had forged for her? Why hadn’t Caridin _told_ her what to do, who to choose? What is it about the slope of her shoulders that convinces everyone around her that there is no weight she can’t carry? If it were just a matter of choosing the decent man between Lords Harrowmont and Behlen, it would be no difficult matter. She’s seen the honesty and honor in Harrowmont’s eyes as clearly as she’s seen the gleam of insatiable greed in Behlen’s. But nothing is ever so simple as that anymore. What she wishes she _hadn’t_ seen was Harrowmont’s willingness to turn a blind eye to what does not fit neatly into his vision of dwarven glory. He let the King’s middle son be sent off to the Deep Roads for a crime no one believes he committed. She’s heard the words, “casteless,” and, “brand,” issue from his polite mouth like the the most profane curses.

What she wishes she hadn’t seen was the pretty red head with the branded face run into the room during her audience with Behlen, makeup smudged and tears streaming down her face. The girl had apologized so profusely; she hadn’t known he was busy with the Grey Wardens. Solona had expected Behlen to be irate. She’d expected the poor girl to be whipped. Instead, he’d wiped her face clean with his own silk handkerchief, and when she’d tried to hide from his guests behind her hands, saying that she looked a mess without her makeup, he’d pulled her hands away, thumb brushing over her brand, and told her she was beautiful. Harrowmont’s crier had announced in the streets that Behlen planned to marry the casteless girl—not take her for his mistress, not just grant her the “privilege” of bearing his children, but _marry_ her—like the fact was a clearer indictment of his disreputable character than the probability that he had engineered the systematic elimination of every family member who stood between him and the throne.

It’s never occurred to her before just how different kings are from everyone else. She wouldn’t hesitate to name the traits she considers most important for everyone else: decency, courage, integrity. But in the end, what matters most in a king isn’t any of these. It’s how he sees the world, how he sees his people. A king shapes his people’s future with his bare hands, and what kind of future can come from a man blinded to so much suffering by his traditions, however decent he may be?

And so, when they have finally made their way back to Orzammar after days of walking through the darkness, and she stands before the Assembly, hands clutched tight on the crown she holds up to keep them from trembling under the weight of every eye in the room, even though she half hates herself for what she is about to do, she makes her decision. She makes it for Zerlinda’s baby boy and for every dwarf whose name has never been recorded by the Shaperate. She makes it in the spirit of brave young Dagna, who she and her companions are escorting to the Circle to study when they leave here, in the spirit of every dwarf who dreams of something other than what they were born to. She makes her decision in the hope for a future that’s brighter than pride in the past.

She watches them drag Harrowmont out of the room to await his execution, guilty, ashamed, sick with herself. Despite the fact that she cannot save this man who does not deserve this ending, she reminds herself to hope. In the end, that’s all she can do, isn’t it? Keep going even though every decision she has to make is harder than the last. Keep hoping that the price of the choice she’s made isn’t greater than whatever good may come of it. That it isn’t greater than the pieces of her that are left to pay.

 

 

She has to restrain herself from running the last few feet through the massive doors that lead back out into the world of fresh air and open sky. The dwarves are an odd, touchy bunch, and she doesn’t want to offend them with her eagerness to leave. When she finally finds herself standing under the twinkling stars in a white, snow-covered world, a weightless, unfettered feeling wells up inside of her and something Morrigan said to her months ago makes a sudden sense. She only has time to tell Alistair, grinning so hard it hurts, “I’m going to fly!” before she feels herself rearranging around that weightless feeling at the center of herself, and then she’s taking off.

From so high above it, the world below her is almost as beautiful as the sky above.

When she finally lands, she feels an instant of fear that she won’t be able to return to her own form, but one look at Alistair’s slightly panicked face reminds exactly her who she is. Once she’s standing on her own two feet again, he flings his arms around her, pulling her hard against him. “I didn’t know you could do that. You scared me halfway to the Void and back.”

Over his shoulder, Morrigan gives her an amused smile. “A little songbird, then? Appropriate, I think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who has given comments or kudos, you guys are kind of the highlight of my existence right now. Thank you!


	27. Would a Ghost Not Rise

Ostagar is a place of revelations. When they return there, she learns just how powerful a darkspawn emissary can be, for one. Powerful and horrifyingly clever enough to preserve the body of its favorite casualty to the tragedy that befell this place like a symbol of darkspawn might. The creature has hung it—him—like an ornament from a structure that reminds her disturbingly of a Chantry sunburst. The spell is good enough that the blood is still wet and gleaming on Cailan’s pale skin. It is not so good as to keep the stench of death and rot from permeating the air.

The next thing Ostagar reveals to her is a reason for some of Loghain’s actions. It’s right there in the letters to Cailan from Empress Celene and from Arl Eamon. He was thinking of divorcing Anora. He was contemplating marrying Celene. Of course Loghain knew. How could either Cailan or Eamon think he wouldn’t have? Hadn’t they heard the stories about the Hero of River Dane? Even Solona, in the Circle, had heard. How he was the one who stabilized Maric’s throne after the Orlesian expulsion. How he used his pocketful of dark secrets to leash those who after everything, despite all he had done, felt they owed no allegiance to the Savior of Ferelden. Loghain was a man known for knowing secrets, and they had been fools to believe he wouldn’t have known theirs. She doesn’t make any comment on how this reflects on Cailan, this knowledge of what he was willing to do in his pursuit of kingly glory. The image of him, white skin marred by streaks of vivid red, is still too fresh in her mind. She especially does not allow this knowledge to run like a chain of gold through the black rope of Loghain’s intentions, which until now have consisted in her mind of little more than hatred for the Orlesians and a grasping desire for power. She won’t believe he did this out of love for his daughter. No, he will have done it to secure his own share of power that he grasped through Anora. That is all, she tells herself. That is all.

The last revelation is the one she would most gladly have foregone. She’s always known, from the first blushing look after he gave her the rose, that Alistair is something she has stolen. She’s always known that, like every treasure too good and beautiful to be hidden away inside the fortified stone walls of the Circle, he was never meant for the likes of her. But it’s never occurred to her before now, when all the emissaries and ogres lie dead, and she watches him kneel in front of the funeral pyre they’ve built for his brother and sees the fierce tears on his cheeks that not even Morrigan would dare call weak—it’s never occurred to her before this that, bastard or no, what she’s stolen him from is his own destiny. Against the backdrop of the incineration of the once king, she sees suddenly in Alistair a glimpse of another king. She sees Alistair Theirin, son of Maric. The setting sun catches in his hair, turning it into crown of gold. Every single lovely thing she’s ever seen before this pales in that moment; this, here, now, _him_. She’s seen beauty, but he’s the most beautiful thing she’ll _ever_ see. And right now, seeing so clearly how he was never meant to be hers, the sight is also the most terrifying thing she’s ever seen.

Later that night, in his tent, she doesn’t know what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s thinking about what he believes he owes Cailan, what he owes his father, what he owes Eamon. That would be like Alistair. Or maybe it’s just that poor, fragile heart of his aching for the brother he never got to know—whatever jokes he makes to Wynne about his only conversation with Cailan consisting of him saying, “Greetings, your Highness,” and Cailan responding, “Ohh, swords!” she doesn’t for an instant believe it means so little to him now. That would be like Alistair too. Or maybe he’s thinking something that she can’t begin to guess. But when they come together, it is, on both parts, with a desperation verging on violence. During, the noises she makes are none of them words. After, she only means to murmur his name once, but it won’t stop falling from her lips, a whispered chant.

He holds her gently now, smoothing his hands along skin that will bear a polka dot pattern of fingertip shaped bruises in the morning. “Shh. I’m here. I’m right here. I’ve got you. Always.”

 

 

She doesn’t know how she’s going to convince Alistair to let her go after Flemeth before the Wilds are too far behind to turn back. The moment he finds out what she’s planning, he’ll sling her over his shoulder if he must to march her north. She knows it. He won’t care if it will cost Morrigan her life if they don’t do this. That may in fact just add a little glee to his step.

She wonders if maybe she asks while he’s distracted enough, she can pull an affirmation out of him without him realizing what he’s agreed to.

Alistair is sitting, shirtless, on a rock at the bank of the river while Zevran kneels in front of him, the tip of the elf’s tongue just visible between his parted lips in a display of unnecessary sensuality disguised as concentration that, if it had not so disconcerted Alistair, might have inspired a touch of jealousy in Solona. It is, certainly, the best opportunity she’s likely to be given. After all, worse comes to worst, at least he can’t actually scoop her up and start hauling her away from the witch’s hut immediately with one of Zevran’s needles sticking out of his chest.

Ug. Needles. She still isn’t entirely sure about this. With a wave of possessive concern, she leans forward over Alistair’s shoulder, cheek resting against his, to give Zevran an hard look. “Just so you know, when _I_ mar him,” she runs her fingers across the scar on Alistair’s side, “it’s manly and attractive.” He giggles, actually giggles, in a decidedly unmanly vocalization. “If _you_ mar him, the Crows themselves won’t recognize your corpse, Zev.”

Zevran just grins at her, perfectly at ease, arranging needles and ink beside him. “Have I mentioned how sexy I find it when beautiful women threaten my life?”

Alistair gives Zevran his customary glare. “Hey, I can reach those needles, you know. How would you like to find out whether or not eyeballs can be _tattooed_?” The word is still foreign on his tongue.

“No need to be jealous. I find it equally sexy when gorgeous men threaten my eye sight as well.”

“Seriously, though,” she says as she straightens, fingers running soothingly along Alistair’s shoulders, “don’t hurt him.”

Zevran’s expression is all coy titillation when he glances with hooded eyes first at Alistair then herself. “But sometimes, my glorious Wardens, the pleasure is _in_ the pain.”

“Yes, well…” The bridge of Alistair’s nose scrunches with something between reluctance and repugnance. “If we could just get to the part where this is done already, that would be lovely, thanks.”

She waits until Zevran has settled into a rhythm, dipping a needle carefully into the little pot of ink, then pressing it with a sure, steady hand into the skin over Alistair’s heart, and Alistair’s eyes are riveted to the elf’s graceful movements. She runs her fingers through his hair in the way that always makes his gaze unfocused and draws out contented sighs. “So… Ali…” Her voice is casual, but Zevran looks up at her with a raised eyebrow that suggests he has caught just how _exceedingly, intentionally_ casual her voice is. She flashes him a pleading expression that Alistair doesn’t catch as he murmurs a single syllable of encouragement for her to continue. With an only half contained smirk, Zevran returns his scrutiny to Alistair’s chest.

“I have to do something before we leave in the morning. You don’t mind, do you? You could sleep in.” She says this as if Alistair ever sleeps in. He’s worse than the very youngest apprentices, hardly old enough for the Circle rather than a Chantry orphanage, terrified that things are _happening_ while they are asleep, that they will _miss_ something.

First comes the, “Mmm,” of distracted assent she was hoping for, but her triumph is short lived. His eyes leave Zevran to meet hers. “What do you need to do?”

Well, shit.

The hand she has in his hair leaves to rub skittishly at her neck. Her chin ducks nearly into her shoulder as she mumbles her reply.

His head tilts. “What?” His voice is still calm and steady, so she knows he didn’t hear a word she just said.

“Um. Well. I just have to, um, kill Flemeth.”

Zevran has the good sense to pull away from the impending explosion, but it doesn’t come. After a tense, frozen silence, Alistair lets out a sharp, hard laugh that contains little amusement. “Sorry, I thought you said you have to kill Flemeth. What did you _actually_ say?”

“Er, yes. That. That I have to kill Flemeth. It’s— _Alistair_ —she _possesses_ her daughters! That’s how she achieves her immortality! She’ll _kill_ Morrigan, Alistair! She’ll kill her and then walk around in her body. I _can’t_ —I _won’t—_ ” She’s filling up with something fierce, sharp, painful, and it’s about to reach combustion when Alistair speaks.

“Fine.” His voice is hard, displeased, and his eyes are fixed on a tree in the distance.

“I—“ she begins, then draws a long breath, cutting herself off. “Fine?”

When he finally looks at her, his expressions softens just a touch. “Fine. I _know_ you, Solona. I know that look on your face, that tone. I know when it’s worth arguing over and when it isn’t. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t do it—if it were up to me, I’d lock you in a tower where you’d be safe until I killed all the darkspawn and all the archdemons and all the other dragons and everything that could ever hurt you. But that isn’t how this works. And it _shouldn’t_ be how this works, and I know that, because mage or princess, what’s the difference when you’re locked away in a  _tower_ because no one trusts you to keep _yourself_ safe, but I just—she’s _thousands_ of years old, Solona! And you’re only twenty! You’re amazing; I know you are, but she’s the _Mother of Vengeance_ , for Maker’s sake!” He takes a deep breath. “But I get that talking you out of this isn’t an option I have. So fine. We’ll go. Because I can’t stop you from trying, and like the Void am I letting you go without me. So… fine.”

She doesn’t know what to say. It’s probably not the time to tell him she’s even younger than he thinks she is. She should tell him not to come, she thinks, that it isn’t worth risking the lives of _both_ of the only two Wardens left in Ferelden for this. But she can’t imagine any possibility of succeeding without him. She shouldn’t be willing to risk him, not when she loves him this much. But she loves Morrigan too, who she knows now, however much the witch might not have _wanted_ to be, _is_ Solona’s friend, one of the best she’s ever had, and she cannot risk her either. Standing there while Alistair looks at her with such a combination of defeat and adoration, all she can think is that she isn’t worthy. She’s dragging everyone she cares about off to fight a woman who Morrigan says can take the shape of a high dragon. A _high dragon_. She is wicked. One day, her soul will wander in the darkest corner of the Void, far from the Maker’s side. The fear for all of them hits her hard for a moment. And then she takes a deep breath and straightens hers spine. _One day_ , she thinks, determination lifting her chin, _but not today_.

 

 

 

There is a moment when she almost falters. They’ve only just arrived at the witch’s hut and the battle hasn’t even begun. The old woman is baiting her. “So lovely Morrigan has at last found someone willing to dance to her tune. Such enchanting music she plays, wouldn’t you say?”

She answers snidely, temper pricked, “I should dance to _your_ tune instead?”

And that’s when Flemeth catches her so off guard that she nearly stumbles right off the path she’s set herself upon. The witch _laughs_. A little shrill, but without venom or cruelty, without boredom or (much) contempt. “Why dance at all? Why not sing?” She is… amused. She is curious… eager even. _Hopeful_ almost. Solona had not expected a woman who has been alive for over a thousand years to still be engaged enough with life to feel any of these things. For just an instant she wonders if there is something she’s missing, something that would reveal this entire scene, the very woman herself, in some different light. And then she thinks of the way Morrigan could only half hide the hurt on her face with an expression of anger when she told Solona about what she had discovered in her mother’s grimoire. Morrigan, who pretends that nothing will ever be close enough to her heart to hurt it, aching. And so she steels herself.

Flemeth’s lack of fear is a little terrifying. Either she has no fear of dying—her curious amusement suggests otherwise to Solona—or she truly does not believe them to be the least threat to herself. When the old woman’s body is enveloped in a cloud of magic so strong it makes Solona’s head swim and the enormous wings of a high dragon appear above the haze, Zevran grumbles in a tone that might be either resentment or admiration, “This must be what it was like for everyone else when you chose to wake me instead of killing me. There is the safe and easy option, killing me while I was unconscious, taking that wretched book that was willingly offered without a fuss… and there is Solona, marching determinedly right past all the good options and into danger.”

Despite his complaint, it is Zevran who ends the battle just before it costs Alistair his life. When the last of her mana pulses out from her fingertips in a blaze of electricity that leaves the dragon-witch’s scales singed and sizzling, the beast shrieks in fury and whips the bony edge of a wing through the air with such force that Oghren goes flying through the air to land in the swamp with a splash and Sten is flung half way back to the hut. Alistair is knocked onto his back, shield and sword both skittering away from him as the monstrosity leers down at him. And then a dagger is sliding smoothly behind her eye as Zevran appears from nowhere, shimmying up the long neck. When her enormous head hits the ground feet from Alistair’s prone body with a thud that makes the earth shiver, the elf rolls gracefully away, grinning at Solona as he sheathes his blades.

Oghren is pulling himself heavily, drenched, from the swamp, a swath of algae painting his red hair green. When he rises, he gives Zevran the skink eye. “Skinny little nughumper. I was about to kill it.”

“Yes, but you were too slow. Very sad for you. It must be those little legs.” He turns back to Solona. “You will tell the dark haired beauty of the majestic grace with which I dispatched her mother, yes? And if she is looking for ways in which to express her delight and gratitude, you can suggest—“

She interrupts the elf with a quick peck to his cheek before hurrying to Alistair. “I’ll do that; thanks, Zev.”

That’s when she sees that Alistair is curled on his side, one hand fisted over his chest, face scrunched with pain. “Alistair! What’s wrong?!” She is already working at the buckles frantically when he collapses onto his back and gently brushes her hands away. “Stupid _tattoo_ ,” he groans. “It burns like the Void. That was a horrible idea. Why did you let me do that?”

She hesitates uncertainly, hands hovering over him, until she can accept that he isn’t actually injured and laughter begins to bubble out of her as she leans down to pepper his face with kisses.

“Mm. That helps.”

“You know what also helps—I could show—“

Before the elf can say anything that she will never be able to unhear, she claps her hands over her ears, still grinning. “Yeah, you’re a doll, Zev, but we’re good. Thanks.”

Oghren’s stink eye melts into his standard expression, the usual bawdy grin. “If you were thinking what I’m thinking, she’s definitely got the cheeks for—“

“Oghren!”

 

 

They’re about to head to Redcliffe, where they’ll actually be earlier than expected to meet Eamon before heading to Denerim for the Landsmeet he has called for, and the idea of weeks in a castle with baths and clean clothes and decent food is almost enough to make Solona, who never cries, weep. That is, naturally, when the merchant shows up with his story about Warden honor and family shame, and she can see he’s caught Alistair at the word, “Duncan.” So she just sighs longingly, and they remap their course. It’s not half as easy as Levi Dryden makes it sound, which is really just to be expected. It leaves her with another piece of herself paid in the hopes of getting something back for it when she leaves alive the two hundred year old mage who’s kept himself from death with atrocities she wouldn’t have believed in before this. The horrible thing is she understands _why_ he did what he did. It’s the same reason, in the end, why she leaves him there alive, warning him what she’ll do if word reaches her that he’s resorted to the black depths she found him wallowing in. They, the both of them, are just trying to snatch back something from the darkness.

 

 

It is an overwhelming thought when she realizes that, truly now, all that is left for them is to return Arl Eamon and accompany him to the fast approaching Landsmeet. It is a source of both anxiety and relief that she will be able to do nothing. It will be up to the Arl to deal with Loghain. As a mage, she will surely be expected to do little more than keep her mouth shut. After all the decisions that she has had to make, she’s less bothered than comforted by the idea that this one thing is not her responsibility. All that is left to her now is killing the archdemon. If one can say, “all that is left,” and, “archdemon,” in the same sentence.

This, she thinks, is one of the last times they will ever camp like this. The ground is hard. She is filthy, unable to do more than sponge off in magically heated water when every river they pass is so dangerously frigid. And yet the fire is bright as it lights up the faces of her friends. The family no mage could ever expect to have.

She is eager for this to be over. She is terrified of it ending.


	28. Up the Globe's Impossible Sides

The first thing they do when they arrive in Denerim, breaking off from Eamon’s party even before they reach his estate, is track down the address where Leliana’s would-be assassin was supposed to have received his pay for a job done. Before Leliana kneels to pick the lock, she turns and unexpectedly embraces Solona fiercely. Her voice is quiet in Solona’s ear as her fingers curl against her back. “Marjolaine took everything that mattered in this world to me once. The only thing anymore that I really care about—the only thing I care about that she _could_ take away from me anyway—is you. Don’t let her do it again.”

Even though Solona knows that Leliana is several years older than herself, in that moment, as she holds onto her skinny frame just as tightly as she’s being held, the woman seems painfully young and frail and small.

All because of the woman waiting in this building. She feels her mana surge like bubbles rising in water. This woman thought she could break Leliana? Solona will break _her_ , will crush her, grind her into a powder finer than lyrium dust.

It isn’t just her anger that urges her to speak when she knows Leliana, left to her own devices, would let the woman go. One day, not so long from this one, Leliana’s path will take her somewhere that Solona will not follow. The Blight will end (or they will all be dead, but that’s not really an option worth planning for, so she puts it aside), and this makeshift family of hers will disintegrate, will scatter to the winds, and when that happens she cannot bear the thought that Marjolaine might be waiting in the shadows for Leliana when Solona isn’t there to face this with her. So she speaks. “You know she will hound you as long as she lives.”

She doesn’t hesitate, the woman who would have let Marjolaine go. She doesn’t even glance at Solona. There’s the slightest nod, the slightest change in her stance, though if it’s enough for Solona to catch it’s surely enough for Marjolaine to see what’s coming.

Later that night when she walks past Leliana’s closed door, there is only silence. From the girl who never stops talking and singing and laughing, from the girl who is all cheer and brightness, silence, Solona thinks, is the most heartbroken sound she will ever hear.

 

 

Arl Eamon is sizing her up. He has been since they arrived in Redcliffe, but here in Denerim it seems less veiled, more conspicuous. She can _feel_ it in the way his eyes settle her when she isn’t looking at him. It reminds her of Knight Commander Greagoir, and once she thinks of him, she cannot stop thinking of the night Jowan ran away from the Circle. Under Eamon’s gaze she feels suddenly again like a fool, like a naive child, like a hopelessly lost cause. She has a floor plan of the Arl of Denerim’s estate that she can’t quite focus on in her hands, because a servant of the Queen has come to them, bringing word that Rendon Howe is holding Anora there against her will. Her father must know—it’s all but inconceivable that he does not. Loghain’s mistrust, it would seem, knows no bounds.

When Alistair steps close behind her, one hand going to her hip, it’s such a familiar movement—this is how they pour over their map of Ferelden together, planning each day’s journey—that she knows his chin is about to descend to her shoulder. And she doesn’t want Eamon to see this. Let him think her a child playing at saving the world if he will, but she does not want him to see what is between herself and Alistair and think that this too is something she’s only playing at. So she moves, hoping her motions aren’t as awkward and obvious as she feels, stepping away, holding the floor plan out to Alistair to peruse on his own. He gives her a look as he takes it, a little uncertain, a little ashamed, and she thinks he’s misunderstood entirely. He thinks she’s embarrassed by _him_. She hates Eamon a little right then for this too.

 

 

She hadn’t known what to expect from Anora. She’s seen paintings, always of an exquisite beauty smiling serenely. But then even if the Queen were hideous, who would dare to paint her so? When they finally manage to open the door to the room where the young woman has been locked away in the Arl of Denerim’s estate, Solona decides the paintings are accurate enough, though she’d describe the expression more as condescending than serene—but perhaps that's due to circumstance. Anora is tall like her father, with his sharp blue eyes, but there the similarities seem to end. Her fair hair and pink cheeks and perfect bow shaped lips must have come from her mother.

It’s the moment when she betrays them to the Captain of Loghain’s guard, telling the woman that the Grey Wardens have come to kidnap her, that Solona understands just how much she really is her father’s daughter.

 

 

Wakefulness comes slowly, so steeped in the throbbing, pounding pain in her head that she isn’t sure how long she’s been aware when she manages a groan. Warm arms tighten around her and Alistair’s breath is in her ear, so soft even she can hardly hear. “Shh; I don’t want them to know you’re awake. Just lie still. I’ve got you.”

She wants to ask what’s wrong with her head, but it won’t come. Just as well since he wants her to be quiet. She thinks for a moment that the pain is more intense than her Joining, but then decides that’s probably just because the pain of the Joining is a memory and this pain is here, now, making itself known with every pulse of her heart. When she reaches to heal it, there is no mana, and she feels a rush of panic.

“My magic—“ Her voice is hushed only because she cannot make it any louder.

“Shh. They gave you magebane. You’ll be okay.” His voice is still soft as a breath. “How bad is it?” His fingers feather over a spot near her temple, and despite the gentleness of the touch, it sets the pain ringing even more forcefully through her skull. She whimpers and pulls away from his hand. He moves his head to pepper the gentlest kisses to the less traumatized side of her face. “I know, I know. Cauthrien got you pretty badly… On the bright side I did get her back for you. We may now be in our smallclothes in a prison cell in Fort Drakon, but,” his whispered voice takes on a pleased quality, “they’d better have a damn good healer if that miserable bitch ever expects to use her right arm again. I was actually trying to hack it off. She’s lucky I wasn’t _quite_ successful.”

She tries not to laugh. She doesn’t know exactly when this happened to her—there was a time, she’s sure, when she would have found his words disturbing. Now, she has to hide a smile against his chest. “Aww. Were you going to give it to me when I woke?”

The noise he makes is more soft snort than laughter. “Yeah. I thought you could plant it in a pot and have it hold up the rose I gave you.”

“You’re so sweet, Ali.” She sighs and despite everything about their current situation, it is a sound of genuine happiness, unmarred by sarcasm or bitterness. “I love you.”

He nuzzles her neck carefully enough to avoid setting off her head again. “And I love you.”

Despite the pain, she begins to take stock of the situation. How Alistair has her in his lap at the back of the cell, facing the stone wall, his body curved protectively around her, blocking her entirely from the view of anyone on the other side of the bars behind him. How they’re both in nothing but their smalls, but he’s got her cocooned in him so she’s touching nothing but warm skin while he’s buffering her from the undoubtedly freezing stone floor. As always, protecting her from everything.

To pass the time, they take bets on who will rescue them, although each speculation is intended more to exceed the ridiculousness of the last than to posit anything likely. Her personal favorite is that Sten and Oghren will impersonate the absurd if talented smith they’d met in Denerim, Wade, and his shopkeeper Herren. “Sten will, of course, be Wade. I mean, obviously.”

He presses his face into her neck to stifle a laugh.

When a noise sounds from behind them and an oh so familiar tone of scathing contempt rings out (“ _This_ is what I donned this ridiculous outfit to sneak in here to rescue them from?”), she startles so hard she actually rises out of Alistair’s lap before falling back against him. 

Leliana’s melodic giggling answers. “Oh, I don’t know, Morrigan. It’s rather sweet.”

Another disgusted snort. “’Tis easy enough for _you_ to excuse. You would wear this hideous circus sack of your own free will.”

With delight, Solona leaps from Alistair’s lap and dashes through the now open cell door, flinging her arms around Morrigan’s neck with a laugh. The sight of _Morrigan_ in Chantry robes is certainly not one she ever expected to be greeted with, and she can’t resist teasing as she hugs the girl tightly. “You came to escort me to the Maker’s side! Oh, Morrigan, you _do_ love me!”

Morrigan sighs again, but the disgust is gone now, replaced by something more akin to resignation. “Repellant though I find such displays…” The witch’s arms raise to awkwardly return the embrace for the briefest moment before her boney fingers are pushing Solona away. “All right, all right; enough. Let us depart before someone realizes that I’m far too attractive to be a Chantry sister.”

“And what exactly is that meant to say about me, Morrigan?” Leliana’s voice is sharp with insult.

“Plenty.”

Solona rolls her eyes. When she glances back at Alistair, he’s staring at Morrigan with a look that’s half confusion, half suspicion. He moves closer. “Did she just… hug you?”

When she frowns, a defense of her friend on the tip of her tongue, he immediately holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just telling you. Don’t say no one ever warned you.” He leans closer, and whispers knowingly, his smirk only half concealed, “Frog time.” Straightening again, he lets the smirk slip over his face entirely. “Don’t worry though. I’ll Smite her repeatedly until she turns you back.”

Morrigan just raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “I’m all atremble with terror. Templars are so very frightful, and you such a shining example of their very finest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The artistic vision of the amazing, talented, wonderful [nanahuatli](http://nanahuatli.tumblr.com/) that was inspired by this chapter may be beheld, in all of its glory, [here](http://nanahuatli.tumblr.com/post/143443372157/i-think-withthebreezesblowns-fic-is-beautiful). (Thank you, Nana!)


	29. Fate Is a Sea Without Shore

She’s in the library when Eamon finds her. She’s missed books. She’s delighted to discover that living a life that isn’t so dull that she’s half desperate to escape it does nothing to diminish the pleasure of slipping outside of herself in the way that only books allow, until she’s pulled back into herself by the sound of the door closing and looks up.

The Arl has recovered from his poisoning well. He wears every bit of the power he wields with a calm authority.

“I wondered if we might speak a moment, my lady.”

She hugs the book she’s just pulled off the shelf to herself. If it were Teagan, she would tease him: they _might_ speak; then again they might not. But he is not Teagan, and it isn’t truly a question. “Certainly.”

Despite the fact that he has been politely interested in her opinions, she feels still like a hopeless, fumbling child in front of the man. 

“I wished to speak to you about Anora.”

Not knowing what else to say—she’d seen his disapproving look when she dared express her feelings on the woman when they returned from Fort Drakon—she simply inclines her head.

“The Landsmeet is only two days away. No matter what you find in the Alienage, our position is tenuous. We would do well to have Anora on our side.”

She considers her words before responding. She does not want to sound juvenilely vengeful, like a slighted child, but she will not pretend to feel otherwise than she does. “How do you expect to accomplish that? She’s made it quite clear that she’s willing to turn on both her father and myself, which makes me doubt there’s anyone under the sun she _wouldn’t_ turn on. The one thing that I have seen enough of her to suspect that she absolutely will _not_ abandon is her claim on Ferelden’s throne.” She doesn’t add the rest of the argument for why his desire is futile; she doesn’t mention that she knows that he’s argued with Alistair thrice since they arrived in Redcliffe to accompany the Arl to Denerim about the boy’s claim to the throne, each row more full than the last of stubborn demands on his part and vociferous refusals on Alistair’s. What Eamon wants and what Anora wants are things in direct competition with each other.

His words are as careful as her own. “And yet there remains a way in which we might all get what we desire.”

She does not follow his meaning, and it makes her feel dim. For all she learned during her crash course in politics in Orzammar, it is still a subject that befuddles her more than not.

“Alistair would need… convincing, I think.” Eamon elaborates. “But it would not be… beyond the sway _you_ hold over him.”

She is forming in her mind some quip that she would never say out loud to this man about Alistair ruling Ferelden from Anora’s lap to allow them both the occupy the throne when she suddenly understands his intentions with a feeling akin to being slapped.

He wants the two of them to marry. He wants Solona to convince Alistair to _marry_ Anora. _Her_ Alistair. **_Anora_**.

“You must know—it’s evident to anyone—he’s mad about you. And you obviously aren’t without affection towards him. He’s a bit like a mabari, I suppose—sweet, brave, an overexcited, drooling mess at the mere mention of your name. It would perhaps be a relief to you to hand off his devotion, a gentle way to let him down.”

A gentle way to let him down? She’s hesitant to display her affection in front of the man, but is she really so distant, so aloof that he cannot see that she is as mad about Alistair as he is about her? Or is the Arl just incapable of seeing anything that isn’t as he wishes to see it? And to speak about Alistair that way, as if he is nothing more than—“ _Like a mabari_?” Her voice is high, louder than she intends, cold as the first snowmelt in spring.

He actually flinches back, his body pulling away from her a fraction of an inch, his eyes on her hands. Wary of the mage. And well enough he should think he needs to be, her rising temper whispers to her, never mind the steadfast grip of her will over it.

He may very well think her a foolish child, but she won’t give him the satisfaction of railing childishly against him. With a look of disgusted contempt, she storms past him and out of the library, and maybe it isn’t _exactly_ mature to throw the door open hard enough that it slams against the wall and echoes behind her, but she does allow herself that.

 

 

She’s hiding with Muffin in Alistair’s room, arguing with herself over whom she hates more: Eamon or Anora. She hates Eamon’s arrogance and assumption. She hates his prejudice. His primary complaint against Anora holding the throne on her own, as far as she can tell, is her lack of noble blood. Apparently being the daughter of a teyrn just isn’t good enough when that particular Teyrn was the son of a farmholder—absurd given that she herself can think of a handful of actual, valid reasons the woman should have no power over anything. Despite her disgust with Eamon, she has no particular desire to defend _Anora_. She hates the Queen too. Her blind, cold ambition, the way she chooses and enunciates each word so carefully, like everyone around her is a spastic toddler. Those rosy porcelain cheeks and her perfect petal pink mouth.

She has to curl her nails into her palm to temper the impulse to slap that comes with the image of Anora’s face. Eamon’s plan seems so obvious now. It must have been in his head even when he agreed they should go to the Arl of Denerim’s estate to rescue her. He wants Alistair on the throne. He wants an alliance with Anora. Anora wants to remain Queen. Solona can see quite clearly now that there has only ever been one point at which all of these desires converge. She suspects that he and Anora had their plans made even before Leliana and Morrigan had arrived at Fort Drakon to rescue herself and Alistair. She even knows how the conversation with Anora would go, not that it’s one she ever plans to actually have. The Queen would use the kind of dialectic leading that Senior Enchanter Orson used to wield during lectures to present his Loyalist viewpoints as though they were the only logical conclusions to draw. She’ll act as though it was Solona’s idea, _her_ suggestion that Anora and Alistair marry.

Like the Void will she let that happen. She knows that the future is uncertain, that things bigger than her are in motion. But for all Alistair’s soft pliancy, he  does not want this. He will not take it. It’s been suggested a handful of times to her that she will have some say in all of this, but she finds the idea absurd. That kind of power is as far beyond her as the second moon. She wonders sometimes if even Alistair really has the power to refuse this if it comes to it; they are all of them being swept along in machinations beyond themselves. She isn’t even sure if Eamon is the one pulling strings, or if he’s as adrift on the tide of fate as the rest of them. Yesterday, loosing Alistair sounded like the worst thing that would ever happen to her. But now she can see the worst thing that could ever happen, and it isn’t losing Alistair. It’s letting a woman who stood by and supported her father when he’d sent her own husband off to his death _have_ Alistair. _Her_ Alistair. She hasn’t spent the last year trying so hard to convince Alistair that he has more value than anyone in his life has ever shown him just to turn around and see him bound to a woman who will never see a lick of it. Anora might yet keep her throne—given that Eamon himself has made it clear he will not pursue it, and Alistair has made it clear he will not accept it, that outcome seems likely. But the cards are all in the air, and Solona cannot guess where they will land. She knows only one thing. Anora won’t have Alistair. She won’t allow _that_. Not ever.

Muffin leaves a streak of drool across her leggings as he rubs his head against her in a way he seems to think she will find consoling.

If she can just hide in here until tonight, then she can avoid the confrontation. They’ll be gone to find out what’s going on in the Alienage long before Anora wakes in the morning. She only has… six or seven hours to go until Anora will surely have retired to bed, she calculates with a groan. She may have spent all that she really remembers of the first part of her life inside a single stone keep, but the last year of open skies and endless space has redefined her idea of close quarters. Without Alistair’s broad shoulders in here to keep the walls where they belong, it feels as though they are closing in on her.

After an hour of agitated dwelling on her anger as the room shrinks around her, she snatches up the book she accidentally stole from the library, having forgotten it was in her arms when she stomped out, and settles herself cross legged at the end of Alistair’s bed. She’d pulled this particular book off the shelf because she recognized it as something she’d seen Wynne reading once. _The Rose of Orlais_ , she quickly discovers, is decidedly _not_ what she would have expected that Wynne would have been so engrossed by. Zevran, more like. Maybe Oghren, assuming he were sober enough to focus his eyes on the page. Or that he can read at all. When Alistair’s door opens, right as she’s reading one of the more, well, _explicit_ bits, she slams the book shut on a reflexive jump and looks up, eyes wide, cheeks flushed.

Alistair looks as startled as she is. “Maker’s breath, there you are. Anora was looking _everywhere_ for you. Leliana told her you’d gone to the market. I didn’t realize she was lying to cover for you.” He shuts the door quickly and leans back against it, giving her a mischievous grin. “You could have told me you were in here, you know. I’d have hidden with you. What were you doing in here, anyway?”

Eamon’s suggestion that she cares for Alistair no more than a dog is still ringing in her head (well, that’s not exactly fair; he called him a _mabari_ , and Muffin is by no means _just_ a dog and her adoration for the silly beast is endless, but she hardly thinks any of that was Eamon’s point). She jumps from the bed and runs to him, arms locking around his neck, kiss fierce.

When their lips part, he laughs, a pleased sound of approval. “I’m wondering if you didn’t find a volume of Antivan love poems after all… What _were_ you reading?”

“Oh, um, it wasn’t that.” She wonders if it’s a good thing that her response is going to look like a lie. If it means that she will not have to tell him the real reason for the desperate way she’s clinging to him, then it’s well worth it. “Just, you know. Something I saw Wynne reading once.” She makes a maneuver to grab the book and hide it, adding to the suggestion that it _is_ in fact the book that’s responsible for her behavior, distracting Alistair from any recourse that might lead to the truth, because she does not _ever_ want to have tell Alistair that Eamon as much as said he thinks the boy is a slobbering idiot.

“Oh? So why are you hiding it?”

There’s a calculating glint of devilry in his eyes, and his lips are twitching, and it’s setting off a sort of anticipatory countdown inside her, despite the lingering resentment and plaintive fury, so she leans toward him, titling her head coyly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

In a flash, he has her slung over one shoulder, and then he’s laughing wickedly. “ _The Rose of Orlais_? I can say with certainty that Antivan love poems would, in fact, have more _plot_ than this. And love poems aren’t exactly narrative, you know.”

She doesn’t bother struggling, just lets her head hang down by his elbow. “Read it, have you?”

“Maker, yes. I read it when I was fourteen. It would have been fantastic, except every time I tried to, uh, _put it to use_ , I couldn’t stop thinking how I’d nicked it from the Revered Mother. The thought that _she’d_ read it just put me _right_ off.” He leans forward to drop her back onto the bed, then settles over her, resting his weight on his arms. “The idea of _you_ reading it, though. Well…”

She laughs as he leans in to kiss her neck, hips shifting against hers. “Alistair, it’s the middle of the day!” She makes the protest as though she wasn’t the one clinging to him, kissing him with abandon a moment ago. Despite her words, her head tilts to allow him better access.

“Yeah, I’ve never had it, but I’m pretty sure I like middle-of-the-day sex. Let’s do it all the time when we’re done killing archdemons. Nighttime sex… and evening sex… and morning sex… and elvenses sex…”

More laughter flows through her, carrying away with it another swell of impotent anger with Eamon. She thinks how embarrassed Alistair would have been to say this to her once. There is nothing left now, she thinks, that they can’t say to each other. “Elevenses is a meal.”

“Mmm. Stupid time for a meal. Unless maybe it’s cheese. Great time for sex though.”

When each has pulled the clothing off the other, and she moves over him, he grabs her hips, stilling her, and just stares at her for a long moment. “You’re beautiful in my tent—I mean, you’re beautiful _everywhere_ , _all the time_ , even with your clothes _on_ —but I think you’re even more beautiful like this, in the light of day, not half hidden in the shadows.” He raises one hand to stroke the back so his fingers against her cheek slowly all the way down to her hip where he gently urges her to move.

It’s slow and sweet in a way that the lacked luxuries of time and privacy do not allow when there’s nothing but cloth walls between them and their companions. It’s like diving into a pool with no bottom; she just keeps sinking deeper and deeper into the sweetness.

Until, without warning, the door to the room opens. Her head snaps up to see Eamon’s stunned, horrified face, and all she can think to do is cover her breasts before she just freezes. There’s a long beat of painfully uncomfortable silence before Alistair is suddenly moving, sitting up to block Eamon’s view of her with his back, yanking at the sheets to pull them around her. His voice has a dangerous, venomous edge that he normally reserves for Morrigan or for taunting darkspawn when he finally speaks. “I know this is _your_ castle, Eamon, but could you perhaps _get the fuck out_?”

She doesn’t understand why he’s so furious—embarrassed certainly, but furious?—until after Eamon hastily retreats without a word. She feels Alistair’s thumb soft as a feather across her cheek. His voice is a whisper, the anger gone. “Solona. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have locked the door. I’m just, you know, not used to _having_ a door to lock. Maker, Lona, don’t _cry_.”

She makes a noise that is mostly laughter. “After _everything_ , to cry about _this_? That would be _stupid_ ,” she says as though her cheeks aren’t wet with tears.

When he speaks again, despite the teasing, there’s something incredibly fragile in his voice. “Eamon knowing that we’re… you know. It isn’t _that_ bad, is it? I mean I know I’m a bit of an idiot, but…”

So fragile. The wrong answer, she thinks, could _shatter_ him. When she shoves his shoulders, it’s hard enough that he collapses backwards. She leans over him, her face close to his, and in her expression is every bit of the anger that she can’t release on Eamon. “You. Are. Not. An. Idiot.”

He holds her gaze for a moment, expression only surprised, before his eyes flutter away and the shyest smile tugs at his lips. _Fragile_. By the time his eyes make it back to hers, his smile has twisted itself into his usual wicked smirk. “I love it when you go all scary mage. Is this the part where you set my sheets on fire?”


	30. Come Like Ghosts to Trouble Joy

Fighting their way through the warehouse in the Alienage is downright easy. It should scare her how easy killing has become. It should scare her that the only time anything really troubles her anymore is when she has to stop and decide what’s right and what’s wrong. She doesn’t have to decide when they make it to the back of the warehouse and, having realized that he isn’t going to beat them, the head of this little slave ring they’ve discovered begs for his life. Behind him are a line of crates, each with a half dozen elves crammed inside. One is a child, no more than ten, with a black eye and a busted lip.

He’s waiting for her answer. When she laughs, it’s a sound she recognizes. It’s the same way she used to laugh when the younger apprentices would say something really ridiculous. Back then she would press her hand affectionately against their round cheeks. She does the same now, her fingers lifting though his face is narrow and angular rather than soft and round, and instead of affection there is only a charge of electricity that spasms through the man as he sags to the floor. This is all that’s left of that Solona from the Circle now. The sound of laughter.

When she uses her magic to break open the lock on one of the crates, the elves that file out stare at her, their owlish eyes that much wider as their expressions fill with either awe or terror. She can’t decide which, so she stays back and lets Wynne do the healing—she’s better at it anyway.

While Wynne deals with the most ill first—a bent, elderly elf who can barely breathe—she watches Alistair lift the child into his arms and bring her to a table nearby where he sits her and tips her head back to examine her wounds. When both hands fly to her hair to make a nervous, frantic gesture there, he looks confused for a moment before his face falls. When his eyes meet Solona’s, there’s such a look of sadness there, and simmering under it is that look of righteous anger he always gets when Solona says anything too depreciating about herself.

Gently, he takes the girl’s hands and sets them in her lap and then brushes her hair back from her face and behind her ears, which she’d been trying to hide, with incredible delicacy. Her chin tries to dip, but his fingers are there, holding it up. “Don’t do that. You don’t have to do that. _Ever_.” He hesitates, considering his words. “It’s like this. I know this mage. She’s pretty amazing. But the thing is, she spent most of her life stuffed in a Circle Tower, surrounded by people telling her that she was dangerous and wicked and an affront to the Maker and all kinds of other horrible nonsense. The crazy thing is, this amazing mage I know, she kind of believed it. Which is _crazy_ , because that’s like letting them win. And she never lets anyone beat her. She’s pretty much invincible. But every time someone said something like that to her, she didn’t even try to dodge. She just let it land, like a punch in the face.” His fingers brush over the girl’s temple, far enough from her black eye not to cause pain but close enough to make a point. “But the thing is, her magic is part of her. It’s part of what makes her _herself_. Her magic and the color of her hair when the sun catches it and the way she smells and the sound of her laugh and they way her chin juts out when she’s being stubborn, which is pretty much all the time… all of those things are pieces of what makes her _her_ , of what,” he leans closer, voice dropping on the rest of the statement to a staged whisper that she can still hear clearly, “makes me love her. And that’s the real thing, what I’m really trying to say. When anyone who _matters_ , whose opinion is worth anything, looks at you, you won’t ever have anything to be ashamed of. And when anyone else looks at you… well, they can take a flying leap into the Void. Because they can stuff you into an Alienage and they can take away your bows and your swords, but only you can let them make you feel ashamed. And like my mage friend, I think you’re way too good for that.”

By the time he finishes speaking, the little girl is staring at him with an expression Solona recognizes. Hiding a smile, she can read it all over the girl’s amazed, wide open face. And who can blame her? If Solona weren’t already head over heels, she’d have just fallen in love too.

It takes her a long time to realize why, then, instead of feeling warm and squishy, she feels like a hole is tearing open inside of her.

She thinks of the night of her Joining, when she’d seen so little of the sunlit world, but she wished it were her own voluntary choice to try to save it. Oh, how she wanted to save this brilliant, lovely place she’d stepped into. She thinks of Alistair’s indirect comparison of the Circle and the Alienage, how these are dark corners that have been walled off from the rest of the gleaming world to keep it free of shadows. She wants more now that she wanted that night all those months ago. She doesn’t just want to _save_ the world. She wants to make it _better_ than it is.

Anora, she thinks, is the exact opposite of Alistair. She looks at people and sees nothing but how they can be of use to her. She calculates peoples’ value to her in the currency of power. Alistair, on the other hand, sees _people_. Each one individual—he doesn’t _like_ them all, Morrigan is proof of that, but he sees them, not the impersonal means to an end. Even here in the shadows. When he looks, she thinks, he doesn’t see mages or elves or peasants. He sees people.

It isn’t just her he makes better than she is. He could make the whole of Ferelden something better.

And she suddenly realizes how badly she wants something that she’s never even considered before: she wants to stand ten years from now in a world he has remade. And yet, she wants to spend the next ten years with his arms wrapped tight around her, the beating of his heart palpable against her cheek.

She is not stupid. She knows that, unlike Eamon’s plotting, there is no place where these desires converge.

It’s a good thing what she wants does not matter. She’s made her contributions to the Landsmeet; her opinions will surely not be among them. Whatever happens now, it won’t be _her_ fault.

 

 

The little girl from the warehouse, reunited with her friends, has evidently spread the word about Alistair. Solona isn’t entirely positive what the word is, but it must be good, because an entire gaggle of elven children has descend upon him, and he is literally being _climbed_ , on several sides, until he collapses into the dirt beneath the vhenadahl as they whoop and cheer.

A voice filled with equal measures disbelief and wonder sounds beside her. “Is that _really_ the shem they’re trying to put on the throne?”

She shifts uncomfortably as she glances over at the woman they met this morning, the cousin of the elf they’d freed from the Arl of Denerim’s estate. They haven’t talked much, but she likes Shianni. She reminds Solona, just a little, of Neria. “Alistair doesn’t want to be king.”

The elf looks up at her with round eyes. “Seriously? A shem who’s nice to elves and isn’t an ambitious noble wanker and doesn’t even _want_ to be king, and they’re going to stick him on the throne anyway?” She grins suddenly and juts a sharp elbow into Solona’s side. “Pinch me; I must be dreaming. This is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

Solona shrugs even more uncomfortably, pushing away the thoughts she herself had just hours ago. “No, I mean he isn’t going to _accept_ it. He doesn’t want to be king. He isn’t _going_ to be king.”

Shianni’s face falls slowly. “Oh.”

She’s quite for a long time. Solona thinks she isn’t going to say anything else when she finally does, quietly. “A few years ago the King went on some kind of dragon hunting expedition in Nevarra. While he was gone, there was an announcement that any finished product not fabricated in the Alienage but being sold here would be considered an import, and, as such, taxable. And then it wasn’t until after he left for Ostagar that all these stupid signs about elves not bearing arms went up.” She looks up at Solona again, face drawn in a harsh, sarcastic frown. “ _He_ wasn’t even here. Tell me, who do _you_ think was responsible?” She snorts bitterly. “You know, there’s a lot of shit I don’t _want_. I don’t _want_ my cousin to be dead. I don’t _want_ to live in a world where an arl can rape and murder an elf on her wedding day and that’s just _okay_. Sometimes… sometimes the most important thing in the world is what you want badly enough to fight for it. And then sometimes, well, nobody fucking cares what you want.”

She’s silent again for a moment, her eyes on Alistair, still laughing and rolling around on the ground. “You know what I would fight for? A world that’s better than it was on my cousin’s wedding day. A world… more like…” She trails off, just shrugs before turning and walking away, but Solona can see exactly what she was looking at when her words abandoned her.

Solona’s always known exactly what kind of a king Alistair _could_ be. She even knows the price she’d have to pay for it. All she doesn’t know is what price it would cost him. He has a strength that he doesn’t even know he has—oh, he knows how heavy a sword he can lift, how large an enemy he can knock down with his shield, but the kind of strength she’s thinking about he doesn’t even see—but she cannot bear the idea of all his soft edges being reforged sharp as a blade. How much would the world have to get back to be worth it to see that price paid?

Solona had told him once that he didn’t owe Eamon anything, and it’s true. Eamon’s opinions mean less to her than the stream of piss Muffin leaves trickling down every upright structure they pass. But these people? These people are certainly owed _something better than this_. And who else can or will give it to them?


	31. On Poised Wings Hung Mute and Moveless

They’re looking through what little armor and weapons Loghain hasn’t appropriated from the Grey Warden Vault. There are quite a lot of spiderwebs and dust. There is not a very great deal else. It makes another wave of anger and resentment rush through her. Not that she should be surprised. He’d engineered their slaughter, why wouldn’t he steal everything of value left from the Grey Wardens? He was only stealing from dead men. Dead men, her, and Alistair.

Alistair is just standing there, and she isn’t sure what he’s seeing, but it certainly isn’t this nearly empty room. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “It isn’t right.”

She knows exactly what he’s talking about. But what she’s thinking about when she answers just as quietly, “I know,” isn’t the dead men she never met. It’s Shianni. It’s all the elves in the Alienage with their eyes downcast, trying not to cause any trouble, living half-lives in the shadows. She knows what it is to live half a life in the shadows—every Circle mage knows. And it’s _not_ right. “What would you give to make it right?”

He exhales slowly, eyes shutting. “Everything.”

She digs through a small stack of leather leggings, trying to find a pair that look like her size, not allowing herself to think too much about what she’s saying. She examines the things in her hands to avoid examining the things in her head. “Even me?”

His eyes fly open, face even more troubled. “What? Why would you ask that?”

She chooses a pair of leggings and leaves the rest. Her eyes shift to him, then restlessly around the room. “It’s just a hypothetical question. If you could _make things right_ and all it would cost is me, that would be a pretty fair trade, wouldn’t it?”

He leans back against the wall, studying her hard. “That isn’t how the world works. The whole world is _unfair_ and _not right_ , and giving up the one good thing that I had the blind, glorious luck to stumble into would never change that.”

He hasn’t really answered her at all, she thinks. She wants to press on, to insist he answer, “ _But if it_ ** _could_** _work that way, if that were all it would cost… it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?_ ” But she knows if she pushes now, he’s going to understand that they aren’t talking about the same things at all. So she returns her attention to the room, says nothing.

She examines an unused leather boot that looks to be about her size. Maker, she hadn’t realized how worn hers were until she looked at this one, the sole thick and sturdy still. As she takes the other, she eyes the shield they were resting on top of. As she wipes away a layer of dust, the heraldry revealed beneath is different from the double griffon on Alistair’s that signifies the Grey Warden Order as a whole. This one bears a single griffon, claws raised in attack. When she lifts it, she’s surprised that it weighs less than she expects. Silverite, then. A fine shield indeed. As she shifts it in her hands, an engraving on the inside catches her eye. _From Maric Theirin, King of Ferelden, to Duncan on the occasion of his appointment as Warden Commander_.

“Alistair… the Warden Commanders each have their own heraldry, don’t they?”

He hesitates before answering, shaking off the mood from earlier. “Traditionally. Duncan usually wore standard issue, but I think his was…”

He trails off as she holds the shield out to him. “This?”

When he looks at her, the full measure of his adoration entirely visible on his face, she thinks that this look from him has become as important to her as air. She doesn’t know how she’d survive without it.

 

 

Alistair doesn’t even have trouble falling asleep. He’s passed out with his face pressed into the crook of her neck, his every breath fluttering through loose strands of hair that squirm and tickle. She is memorizing it. Every detail. The warmth of his skin, the rough scratch of his stubbly chin against her bare shoulder. His fingers curled around the curve of her rib.

That day at Ostagar when the King and Duncan died, it was like Loghain had thrown a deck of cards straight into the air, but instead of falling, they had simply frozen at the point of inflection. All these months that they have been running back and forth across Ferelden, snatching a single card from the air here and there—the arl’s life, the mages, the Dalish, the dwarves—the rest have hovered, still and silent as the stars. And tomorrow they will begin to fall.

And he’s sleeping, like it’s nothing. So sure that none of it will affect him. Because she had said once that he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to, and he believed her.

How can she sleep when there’s a voice inside of her that won’t shut up? It’s Shianni’s voice, but it isn’t just hers. It’s also the voice that told her to suck it up when they had to go back to the Circle and she’d rather have faced the archdemon one on one right then and there than go. The one that told her not to kill the wolf Witherfang without hearing the other side of the story. The self same one that, guilty, hopeful, desperate, made her place Caridin’s crown on Behlen’s head.

 _Hush_ , she thinks miserably. _I won’t wake him. I won’t say it. You can’t make me._

The problem, she understands, with arguing with herself is that even when she wins, she loses.

She doesn’t realize she already has woken him with fingers clutching mindlessly at his arm until his head raises and cold air rushes to fill the space he’s vacated.

His voice is groggy, sleep muddled. “Lona? Wasrong?”

Her mouth won’t move, not to tell him that it’s nothing; it’s fine; go back to sleep. Not to tell him what those voices, Shianni’s and her own, are whispering inside her head. So much for the idea that there's nothing left she cannot say to him. This is the moment, she thinks, when the future splits in two. In one, she sings him back to sleep and she spends every night that she gets in this world wrapped in his arms. And in the other, she tells him what he should do, not what she wants him to do, not what he ever wanted to do, but what he _should_ do. Because the world is lovely, and he is bright as the sun, and he could illuminate everything. And if she asks him, because he trusts her above all others, because he loves her enough that he would do anything for her, _anything_ , even this, he will do as she asks. And she will spend every night that she gets in this world in the negative space that could have, _would_ have been his arms.

Maybe she’s being melodramatic, creating a conflict where there is none. Maybe, fools that they are, the nobles who will decide this won’t _want_ Alistair.

She’ll always wonder though. If she says nothing now, she’ll always wonder if the world she’s living in could have been something better than it is if she’d been less selfish.

So she waits until he asks again, voice clearer, one hand touching her cheek to draw her attention to him. “Solona. What’s wrong?”

“I think you should be king.” Her voice comes out softer than she means it to, a hardly audible whisper.

His fingers slide along her jaw away from her and then hover an inch from her face. “What?”

She thinks suddenly of one of her lessons in the Circle, years ago now, one she’d all but forgotten. She was supposed to be practicing creating a bolt of lightening. It was something she’d done unintentionally a few times. Once only shortly after she’d arrived when a girl several years older than her had snapped at her for crying in the night—“You can screech like that til the sun rises, but it won’t change the fact that no matter how much you want her, your mother doesn’t want _you_. Because you’re a mage. So just shut up”—and once when Neria had gotten into a fist fight with Anders and he’d pulled on her ears until she screamed. But never on purpose. It was well before she understood the way things work in the Circle and made her informed decision to devote herself to creation magic in an effort to escape the attention of the templars. Irving had been insistent. When she’d realized he wasn’t going to let her go to dinner until she’d at least tried, she’d done her best. She really had. But it was like trying to uncurl fingers that only knew how to make a clenched fist. Halfway into it, she’d remember the shame of those accidental surges, and the spell had snapped back on her, the charge coursing through her own body. She hadn’t cried out. She remembers being very proud of that. That was when Senior Enchanter Sweeney, who she hadn’t even known was watching, stepped in.

“For Maker’s sake, Irving, if the child doesn’t want to practice her primal spells, let her be.” He’d knelt down and taken her fingers, raw where her magic had broken and turned itself on her, in his hands where a cool rush of healing soothed the sting. And then he’d looked at her with such understanding. “Listen here, child, just because he’s the First Enchanter doesn’t mean you can’t say, ‘No.’ There’s nothing worse than a spell you aren’t committed to. So the next time he tells you to try a spell that you aren’t willing to commit to, then commit to the word, ‘No.’ Don’t waver. Don’t reconsider. Make your decision and commit to it.”

She’s thinking of Sweeney, his once sharp blue eyes hazy the last time she saw him in the Circle library, as she finds her voice. _Make your decision and commit to it_. “I think you should be king.” She knows her chin is jutting out now, just the way Alistair told the little girl it did.

And then he’s backing away from her without turning. He stumbles out of the bed, almost falling, eyes still on her face, and doesn’t stop backing away until he hits the wall. His voice is cold and raw when he speaks. “If you don’t want me, you don’t have to do _that_ to get rid of me. If you don’t want me, _just say so_. Don’t make the entire country suffer because I’m not good enough for you.”

 _So fragile_. She moves forward slowly until she’s kneeling at the edge of the bed. “Alistair. You’re my sun and my stars. You’re _everything_ I want.”

Instead of appearing reassured, he just hoovers there, tense, waiting on the edge of an impossible cliff. “Then why would you say that?”

She draws a slow breath. “Because Anora isn’t a good person. Because—I’m not saying she’d _ruin_ Ferelden, but… she certainly won’t _improve_ it. Don’t you see, Alistair? You could _remake_ Ferelden. You are so, so _good_ and _fair_ and _compassionate_ , and you could make Fereleden _better_. I’ve seen the people of Ferelden, and they’re nothing like what I was told. I was told they were cruel and ignorant and hateful. And sure, _some_ of them are, but they’re also kind and brave and so full of _hope_. And they trust us, Alistair, you and me, to _save_ them. They _deserve_ better than Anora. They deserve someone who _sees_ them. You see _everyone_ else; why can’t you see what you’re worth? All you ever see is what you aren’t good enough for. But I see good and beautiful things _everywhere_ , and I’ve seen _nothing_ like you. ‘ _Good enough_?’” She pauses an instant, shakes her head, snorts bitterly. “You’re the _only_ person I see who’s _good enough_ for the people of Ferelden.”

When she sees the tears in his eye, she holds her arms out to him and, as though compelled, he comes. She’s kneeling on the bed, but he drops to his knees on the stone floor in front of her and puts his head in her lap. “Please. Please, Solona. Don’t ask me this. Please.”

“Don’t you see? Don’t you see how badly I wish I were selfish enough to not tell you that I know it isn’t _right_ for me to keep you to myself? You were right. You said I wasn’t selfish, and I didn’t believe you, because I didn’t think anyone who wanted you as desperately as I do could possibly not be selfish. But in the end you were right. There is _one_ thing I want enough to ask you to do this. I want to live in a world where mages and elves and dwarves and humans with no title to their name are treated like they mean something. I want to live in _Alistair’s_ Ferelden. I don’t know who I’d be if I were capable of not asking you this. I don’t know who that would make me, but it wouldn’t be _me_.”

It’s an eternity before he speaks again, a hint of hope in his broken voice. “If they offer it to me, I won’t say no. But I won’t fight for it, Solona.” When he raises his head, his expression is a weak and watery imitation of the smirk that she loves. “Maker, who in their right mind would offer a throne to me? Move over. I’m going back to sleep. It isn’t as though I have anything to worry about. You’re mad if you think they’d even give it to me if I _did_ want it.”

He doesn’t sleep again though. He’s quiet, but she can tell he’s doing exactly what she’s doing as they lay there wrapped around each other. He’s memorizing everything he might lose.

 

 

It’s early. The night sky has hardly begun to lighten. Alistair is, at last, fitfully asleep. Solona still cannot manage it. So she crawls as carefully as she can from his arms, from the bed, surprised when he doesn’t wake, and dresses quietly. She doesn’t even realize that she’s been half holding her breath until she steps out onto the battlements with nothing but clear sky above her and draws a breath of chill air so deep it makes her lungs ache.

She picks out constellations one at a time, remembering the stories Alistair has told her. She’s doing her best to remember every word, every punctuation of laughter. She focusing, lost in her memories, and she doesn’t hear anyone approaching until a voice interrupts her thoughts.

“Warden.”

Maker’s breath. Eamon. She can only hope that the still freezing temperatures of late Wintermarch will disguise her flush of embarrassment (his _face_ —her, _naked_ and— just, _Maker_ ) as merely a reaction to the cold. She does not even know how to react to him, so she follows his lead and settles for cool if hesitant decorum. “Arl Eamon.”

“I believe I owe you an apology.”

She is surprised—she did not expect this from him—but she manages to react with only a stoic raise of her eyebrows.

“I beg your pardon for my words to you about Alistair. I was unaware—“ he cuts himself off with a sigh and then tries again “—I was quite blind to the relationship between you—perhaps willfully so—and I thus put you in an uncomfortable position with my request.” He bows slightly to her, a terribly formal gesture. “My apologies.”

She wonders for a moment if his formality is due to a lack of sincerity. It could be, but she suspects rather that he is simply a man unused to believing he has been given cause to apologize. She still cannot figure what kind of man he really is. Right now: proud or arrogant? When he sent Alistair first to the stables then to the Chantry: foolish in his love for his wife and bad at compromises or cruel?

At her continued silence, he clears his throat quietly. “I can’t pretend I’m not relieved to know we won’t have to pay the price that Anora’s cooperation would have cost.”

She can’t help the words that come out of her mouth. She does not understand him, and she finds that she needs to if there’s any chance that she’s going to be leaving Alistair in this man’s hands. “There’s talk at the Gnawed Noble. They’re saying you want to put Alistair on the throne to seize power for yourself.” She inclines her head, as though her next words are meant to excuse him. “Loghain’s doing, I’m sure. I have a hard time believing it given that you could just as easily put in your own bid for the throne.” Her head, still tilted, tips back a bit as she considers him “…But why _are_ you so determined to see him King?”

The Arl doesn’t answer at first. He steps past her to rest his hands on the parapet as he stares out at the grounds. “I was twenty-four when my sister died. Rowan was not yet thirty, and she, a warrior fierce as any man, had lain in that bed wasting away for nearly a year before the illness claimed her. She knew when the end was near, though. The last thing she said to me was, ‘Eamon, take care of my boys. Maric and Cailan. Promise me you’ll take care of them.’ And I did. I swore to her on bended knee beside the bed she died in that I would do all that I could for Maric and Cailan. She’d been dead a few years then, but that promise came to my mind the night that Maric showed up at Redcliffe with a babe in his arms. I didn’t really understand, then or afterwards, why he wanted to leave his son with me. Maric was never one to shirk his responsibilities. And no one will ever tell me he didn’t want the boy. If you could have seen the way he cradled Alistair against his chest, how he touched his cheek when he’d released him into the arms of kitchen maid who came to collect him… Before he left he wanted me to know—was adamant that I understand—that he was not pawning his child off on me. He was _entrusting_ him to me. I swore to look after the boy. The same way I’d sworn to my sister on her deathbed that I’d do what I could for her husband and her son.”

He laughs then, a soft but miserable sound that she would never have expected from this venerable, refined man, and finally looks over at her, his face unexpectedly vulnerable. “Maker, I must sound like either a liar or a terrible to failure to you.”

She does not know what to say. She says nothing.

“For whatever it’s worth to you, I’m not just trying to make right my own failures by putting a Theirin on the throne where he belongs because his blood says so. That boy is…” His eyes brighten suddenly with a look of such hope before his face falls, and he turns again to face the city spread out before them. “Cailan was my nephew, and I loved him. I would never have given up on him, as Loghain did, but… I knew when he was still a boy that he’d inherited more flaws than virtues from Maric and Rowan. The worst of both of them, in some ways. Her impulsiveness without her quick wit. His stubbornness without his patience. I’d thought when he was a child that he just needed to grow up a bit. And yet, had he lived to be a hundred, I suspect I would still have been waiting.” He shakes his head, a sad, indulgent half smile ghosting over his face before he settles those penetrating blue eyes on her. “Alistair though… he perhaps has some growing up to do himself, but that boy is Maric all over again, through and through. I don’t just owe this to Rowan and Maric. I owe it to the _people of Ferelden_.”

She can’t stand the intensity of his gaze. He seems to see everything, and she hates it. She leans forward, resting her forearms on the parapet, to escape his gaze. Her eyes find the upper branches of the Alienage’s ancient tree rising up, just visible from here. Her voice is hushed. “They deserve no less.”

He seems quietly surprised. He lets out a slow exhalation before responding. “I know it isn’t what he wants now. But sometimes what we want isn’t what we’re meant for.”

She realizes then that some of the nervous anxiety the Arl inspires in her has fallen away as she gives him an only slightly bitter smile. “Says the man who married an Orlesian less than a decade after the hard won success of the Ferelden Rebellion, against all advice and council.” Her smile slips as her eyes slide away. “I know that though. I’ve always known that.”


	32. The Coward Does It With a Kiss

She doesn’t at first understand what Eamon is playing at when it’s time to offer a rebuttal to Loghain in front of all the lords and ladies of Ferelden, and he nods at her calmly. What this side of the Void could have caused him to think her more suited to addressing these people than himself, a man born and raised to play at politics? When her voice rings out, clear and unwavering in the quiet as everyone in the room stills themselves to listen, she learns that this voice, the one that isn’t quite hers, isn’t just—as she once thought—the voice of a liar. Every word she says is true, and every word is listened to. She can see heads nodding in response. She tells them that the Blight is the real threat, not Orlais, because surely everyone but Loghain, in his blind hatred, can see that. She tells them about the boy tied to a rack in Howe’s dungeons and what Jowan did to Eamon, and every time she speaks, another bann braces their hands on the banister in front of them and meets her eye with a steady look of determination.

And then Anora, who has been staying in the safety of Arl Eamon’s walls and eating his food happily enough the past few days, waltzes in to denounce Solona in what may be the most overdramatic bid at a display of public humiliation Ferelden’s throne room has ever witnessed. It hardly even phases her—it is, after all, not the first time the woman has betrayed her, and she actually saw this one coming. When Alistair grumbles, “Oh, and she turned on us. What a shock. She seemed like such a _nice_ despot,” she can’t quite completely suppress a smirk as she gives him a subtle shake of her head to shush him.

It doesn’t matter though, Anora’s little display. Because Eamon knew exactly what he was doing when he put her in front of Banns Alfstanna and Sighard, in front of Arls Wulff and Byland, in front of every person in charge of the safety of others who has lost or stands to lose something to the darkspawn. Even the Grand Cleric has harsh words for Loghain. Maker, who ever would have thought a day would come when a Grand Cleric would side with a mage over the Hero of River Dane? Not that that is _exactly_ what has happened, but still.

When the vote is cast and the outcome is clear, she has to put her arms behind her, one hand clasped around the opposite wrist, to keep anyone from seeing she’s shaking. Anyone but Alistair, standing close in that stance that’s both loose and tense that tells her he’s just waiting for anyone to dare to draw a weapon on her. He moves his hands so subtly that surely no one sees his gloved fingers brush against hers. And then she can breathe again, because it’s going to be okay. He’s got her back. No matter what happens here today, so long as they survive it that won’t change. Alistair will always have her back.

“Call off your men, and we’ll settle this honorably.”

The speed at which Loghain reigns in his anger frightens her. All she can think is that someone who can pull that much rage back that sharply must be angry _all_ the time. His voice is still cold and displeased, but he’s ready to fight with a clear head. “Then let us end this. I suppose we both knew it would come to this. When we first met at Ostagar, I would never have thought so.” His focus moves to somewhere a little above everyone’s head, and for just a moment she thinks maybe he knows how this is going to end, because there’s already a note of defeat in his voice. “But Ostagar seems like it happened in another lifetime, to someone else.” And then his gaze fixes on her. He doesn’t spare a glance for Eamon or Alistair flanking her. His eyes are so intense she wonders if he can’t see straight through her. “A man is made by the quality of his enemies. Maric told me that once.” He lets out a small snort that she thinks may actually be laughter. “I wonder if it’s more a compliment to you or me.”

Maybe he’s just trying to throw her off, because she’s pretty sure that, coming from him, that was _definitely_ a compliment to her.

When he asks if she has a champion, she almost laughs in his face. As though, as carefully phrased as it’s all been to act as though she’d ever be allowed to face Loghain herself, anyone would abide by a mage and her magic defeating the Hero of River Dane, no matter what the people gathered here swear. Even if she used no magic but the heft of Spellweaver in her hands, she doubts they’d ever abide it. She wonders if these people, who’ve likely never seen magic beyond tricks performed at a ball by some enchanter sent by the Circle to entertain nobles, _really_ understand why everyone is expected to fear mages. She wonders if they understand that she could destroy this entire room and everyone in it in a matter of moments with a storm of raging ice and bolts of lighting that jump from one body to the next, and no one who’s never tasted lyrium could stop her. It is a strange thought to her. She’s never considered herself to be the one with the odds stacked in her favor. She’s never thought of herself as a power unmatched.

She almost laughs in Loghain’s face. But she can’t laugh. Because Alistair _isn’t_ a power unmatched. He’s just a boy with a soft heart and a sword, and if he falls, she knows better than to expect mercy from Loghain, for him or any of them. She’d tried to tell Eamon that morning that they should use Sten as their champion. The qunari is as much mountain as man. But even she couldn’t argue with Eamon’s point, not when it was the first time in her presence she’d ever seen Alistair agree vehemently with the man. Eamon had looked at her with sympathy—a look she didn’t want, not from him, a look she could barely meet without thinking of his horrified face in Alistair’s door, without blushing and wanting to leave the room—and said, “This isn’t just about a future king proving himself to his subjects. Whatever outcome you and the boy are hoping for, whoever sits on the throne at the end of this, we _must_ have the Landsmeet on our side. Fereldens are a stubborn, proud lot. They’ll favor no one who isn’t willing to fight his own battles. They’ll understand why _you_ must have a champion—they’d accept no less. But it has to be Alistair.”

“If you think I’m just going to stand there and let _someone else_ take him down—“ Alistair’s jaw had clenched, his face had hardened. “—like the Void I am.”

So instead of laughing, she just says, “Alistair is my champion.”

Loghain looks surprised at that, finally sizing the boy up for the first time. “Then let us test the mettle of our would-be king. Prepare yourself.”

A moment later, she is tugging on Alistair’s chest plate. It’s perfectly straight, griffon wings spread in absolute symmetry between his shoulders, all his buckles fastened tightly, but she isn’t ready to let go yet, so she keeps tugging.

Finally his hands close around her wrists, the leather of his gloves soft, cool, as familiar as the warm hands beneath them. He waits until she looks up at him to speak. “Hey. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got this.” His eyes flicker to Loghain, and everything about him tenses, clenches. “I’ve definitely got this.”

She wants to kiss him, but every noble in Ferelden is staring at them. Maybe not kissing him doesn’t even matter. Maybe they can see her heart smeared all over her face every time she looks at him anyway. Still, she doesn’t dare. She just meets his eyes and feels her chin push forward—she hadn’t realized how often she makes the gesture until she’d heard him call it out. “I know. I know you do.”

She doesn’t want to let go, but she can feel Eamon hovering behind her, waiting to get his word in. So she steps back. Alistair drops one wrist, but the other stays wrapped in his hand, keeping her next to him.

Eamon nods slowly. “You understand what is at stake.” He glances back at their companions and then looks pointedly at Solona before returning to Alistair. “If Loghain wins, they’ll all hang.”

Alistair’s grip tightens until he’s all but crushing her wrist. “ ** _No_**. If he wins, you get her out of here, Eamon. Get her to Riordan.”

She understands Eamon’s tactic, perhaps better than Eamon himself, because she has _seen_ Alistair throw himself in front of death for her. But that isn’t what he needs now. Worrying about her will only distract him.

Her chin is thrust out so far, she must look half as haughty as Anora. “No, _yourself_. No contingency plans. We don’t need them.” She glares at Eamon. “Alistair’s _got this_.”

She waits until he’s pulled his helmet, and then, despite the eyes on them, she does kiss the metal, pulling his head down to plant her lips where his forehead would be. They cannot fault her for this. A lady’s favor. A friend’s blessing.

It’s a close thing, a long fight. They’re evenly matched. She knows Loghain favors bows; she’d hoped he’d be less capable with a sword and shield. She should perhaps have known better than to think one of the men at the center of the Orlesian expulsion wouldn’t know what to do with a sword. Watching Alistair fight like this is both familiar and strange. It’s hard to keep herself from casting a barrier around him, but she understands that that would be a forfeit, and she understands what a forfeit would mean for all of them. So she stands between Leliana and Wynne, hands clutching theirs, willing Alistair strength and speed but casting nothing.

When Loghain knocks the shield from Alistair’s hands, and it goes skidding across the floor, she has to bite back an exclamation. If she makes a noise, she’s afraid he’ll turn. No matter the several hundred murmuring voices and gasps around them. If she makes a noise, he’ll know her voice from all the others, and if he turns… So she’s silent, knuckles white where her fingers are twined with her companions’. The long fight ends suddenly. Shield gone, Alistair focuses entirely on his sword, and a series of rapid, desperate motions—graceful as a dance, powerful as an angry mabari—leave Loghain on his knees, weaponless hands resting on his thighs. His expression is not what she expects. The anger is not gone, but mixed in with it is… she thinks that it’s relief. “So there is some of Maric in you after all. Good.”

Alistair’s eyes meet hers, and he waits for her nod before he moves, before he responds. “Forget Maric. This is for Duncan.”

Anora is running forward, but it’s too late. She arrives by her father in time only for a spray of blood to spatter across her shocked face.

Alistair drops his sword, and he and Anora both just stare at Loghain’s body on the floor.

She doesn’t expect the sympathy that rises up for the woman, and yet there it is. This is hardly the first time she’d wished things could have happened differently than they have though. She puts it away with the rest of her regrets.

“So it is decided. Alistair will take his father’s throne.”

Eamon’s voice brings both Alistair and Anora out of their silence, him protesting that nothing has been decided, her pouncing upon his protest to insist he’s refused the throne. And suddenly Eamon is turning to her as he tries to mediate. “Warden, will you help us?”

Alistair’s face falls with dismay. He didn’t know, she thinks. He didn’t know about the conversation she had with Eamon in the small hours of the morning. Surely, without that, the Arl would never have put this decision in her hands. Silently, Alistair shakes his head at her. Begging. One last time.

Telling Eamon she needs to question them both first, she gives Anora exactly one chance to change her mind. “What makes you a better choice than Alistair?”

 _Please_ , she thinks as desperately as Alistair said it to her last night. _Please give me_ ** _one_** _reason to believe you’d do this_ ** _right_**.

Anora scoffs, a harsh snort preceding her words. “Surely that’s not a serious question? I have been the ruler of this nation in all but name for the last five years. I can lead Ferelden. Alistair can’t. If you give him the crown, then you’ve only bought us a brief pause in the civil war. It will resume again at the first opportunity, and it won’t end until a new dynasty holds power.”

She doesn’t see him. She doesn’t see Alistair at all, just like she’ll never see her subjects as anything but a mass of fools that only she is clever enough to lead.

Solona wants them to know, all the people gathered in this room, _why_ she’s making her decision. She wants them to know that she’s giving up the brightest thing in her world _for them_. But they won’t believe it if she just tells them, and all she can think to ask of Alistair is, “Do you think you’re ready to be king?”

She wants him to say something that will make them see how much of himself he will give for them, how kind and brave he is.

He doesn’t exactly rise shining to the occasion. “Are there people who are ready for that sort of thing? But I guess… if it comes down to it, I’ll do my best.” What he doesn’t know, what she wishes he knew, is that his best is so much better than he thinks it is. He groans under his breath so quietly that she doubts anyone but herself, Eamon, and Anora can hear it, then mutters just as quietly “I think my stomach just twisted up into a knot or something.”

Her chin rises as she looks away from Alistair. “I’m ready to choose.”

She doesn’t even hear what Eamon says in response, but when he falls silent, she knows it’s time. She looks at Alistair again, because he deserves that, he deserves for her to meet his eyes while she takes away from him the life he wanted and gives him one he never desired. “Alistair.”

There are only a handful of things that hold her attention after that.

One is Anora’s face, coolly surprised when Alistair says something about having her locked up in a tower because he certainly isn’t going to have her killed. “Thank you, Alistair. You show me mercy that I… would not have shown you.”

 _Yes_ , Solona thinks distantly. _That’s why I picked him. Don’t you see?_

The other is Alistair’s expression when he turns to her, addressing her for the first time since she did this to him. “Shall we finish this thing together?” And she can see what he’s really asking. _We’re still in this together, right? You’ve still got my back? Because I’ve still got yours._

And her own answer is as much in her face as her words. _I’ll always have your back. But everything has changed._ “I could do no less, my King.”

 

 

She and her companions are in Eamon’s kitchen, and they’re trying to distract her. She knows they’re trying to distract her because no one, not one of them, has mentioned Alistair. It’s the first time they’ve all sat around like this without him, the first time that “all of them” didn’t mean him too. He’s with Eamon, having, she presumes, his first crash course on being King. She isn’t sure if she’s dreading or anticipating the moment when the two of them will be alone together and all the words that have to be said will come out.

When he walks into the kitchen, pale, weary, and says they need to talk, she’s ready to follow him anywhere. What she isn’t ready for is for him to do this right here, in front of everyone.

“…being king, that raises some questions about us. About you and me.”

All she can think is, _Here? Are you really doing this_ ** _here_**? It’s what she really means when the words, “What sorts of questions?” come out of her mouth. She knows perfectly well what sorts of questions. Maybe it’s a little cruel to ask him, to make him say it, but _how could he_ do this to her _here_?

He’d told her once he would defend her heart unto death. And she understands that it’s _her fault_ , every promise he made to her that’s broken now, but _Andraste have mercy_ , it hurts so bad she doesn’t know how to breath through it.

“First there’s the fact that both you and I are Grey Wardens. It’s not just a question of obligation, but of blood. You know that Grey Wardens don’t usually live to become old, right?”

Maker, he’s nervous. It almost softens her, but she can feel how studiously no one in the room is looking at her, how hard they’re pretending they can’t hear what’s happening right in front of them. Her voice is downright cold when it makes its way out of her constricted throat. “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

His hands are clenching and unclenching down by his sides. She can see that he’s fighting to keep from fidgeting. Eamon must have told him kings don’t fidget, because Alistair has never hesitated to before. He fidgeted with the rose, before he gave it to her; he fidgets with the coin that saved his life, with the little figurines that make him grin like a fool when she gives them to him. It’s consistent, predictable: the sun rises in the east; Alistair fidgets. Only now he does not. “As king, I’ll be required to have a child. Even more so because my death is assured. That’s assuming someone with the taint can or even should have a child.”

And suddenly she understands. It’s in the defeat in his shoulders, in the reluctant tone of his voice. He fought with Eamon over this. He fought with him, and he lost. And his concession for losing is that he has to stand here and say these things to her that he never wanted to say. If she thought their conversation on the battlements had changed Eamon’s opinion about her, well she sees now that this was never about Eamon’s opinion of her. Maybe it’s about the fact that he thinks any childish infatuation— _it_ ** _wasn’t_** _that; it was_ ** _never_** _that—_ an impediment to Alistair becoming the kind of king he needs to be. Maybe he just thinks her an obstruction to Alistair blinding following his advice. Whatever Eamon’s motivation, he’s made his argument, and he’s won, and it’s breaking Alistair’s heart. She has no idea how to make this easier for him, because surely he deserves at least that from her, after what she’s done. So she just nods.

“I will need to find a wife, one who can bear a child. Who will live to raise it. I don’t relish it, but… I will have a duty as the king.” His hand half raises toward her face, and then falls back to his side, fisted, finally still. “I love you. More than I ever thought possible, but… I have to face what this means. I can’t run away from it anymore.”

Maker, but she’s proud of him. Even while her heart is breaking open, the rush of pride is fierce enough to hold her together, for him, for now. She nods again. “I understand.”

He’s staring at her collarbone, and she knows from the hundred times he’s done it before that all he wants is to press his forehead there and breath slowly against her skin. “I could see it becoming very hard to tear myself away from you. Impossible, even. If this is what it must be then… then I have to do it now. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t mean to ask the question that comes out small then, she really doesn’t. “Is this revenge for my making you king?”

His eyes fly to hers, his expression appalled, and he just shakes his head for a long time before he answers. “No, of course not. I said I understood why you decided what you did, and I do. But at the same time, I cannot avoid what that entails.”

She has no idea what else to say. She wants nothing more than to be alone, buried in the soft mattress of a bed in one of Eamon’s guest rooms, thick blankets piled over her, or in a basin for bathing, heating the water with her magic until a wall of steam separates her from the world. “So this is it. It’s over.”

He doesn’t look at her. “I think it’s best. For both our sakes.”

These must be Eamon’s words too, because she doesn’t believe that he means them, not for a minute. But he just stands there, hands fisted, eyes on her shoulder because they can’t meet hers. Her hands rise slowly to repeat the gesture she’d made earlier in the day, just before he’d walked out to face Loghain. Now, instead of the scratched metal of his helmet, his cheeks are warm under her palms. She lets her lips rest for a moment on his unhappily lined forehead before she releases him. “You’ll be a good king.”

He leaves his head bowed, close to hers for a time before he answers, his voice a whisper so quiet that she doubts even Leliana, closest to them, can hear. “But I’d gladly trade all of those things for what I really want.” Finally his head rises. “I…need to go. Be by myself for a while.” His feet are already backing away by the time the words fall from his lips. He all but flees from her.

 

 

She can’t bear her own room. It is by no means small—in fact, it’s the largest guest room she’s seen in this sprawling estate, significantly larger than even Alistair’s, given to her as a guest of honor—but it feels small enough to crush her as she lays awake in her bed until she cannot lay there any longer.

She finds herself standing outside of Wynne’s room. She can tell by the flicker of candlelight still visible beneath the door that the woman hasn’t gone to sleep yet either. She knows where all of her companions sleep, and if she were wise, she would go to Leliana or Morrigan. Leliana would look at her with too much sympathy, and it might break her, but the witch would sigh as though she were being very put out, and then she would let her in anyway. She’d probably even let Solona sleep in her bed. She’s called Solona, “sister,” after all. She likely wouldn’t even say anything Solona doesn’t want to hear, other than maybe, because she could not help herself, “He is an idiot.”

But she doesn’t want to be told that Alistair is an idiot, because he _isn’t_. She wants all of the accusation and blame that she deserves. Wynne has always liked Alistair better than her. She’d warned her once, months ago. She’d warned Solona not to break his heart, and she hadn’t listened. She’ll say the things that Solona deserves to hear. So she knocks.

The mage’s lined face isn’t accusing when she lets Solona in though, only concerned. When she asks, “What is it, child?” Solona thinks that she knows perfectly well what.

She clasps her hands together in front of her. “You were right.”

She only looks puzzled for an instant before her face falls. “Oh, Solona. I thought you knew. I thought you knew _then_ , that _I_ was the only one who took so long to see, and I didn’t think _this_ would take that knowledge away from you. If I’d realized you didn’t know, I’d have told you before now.”

She doesn’t say anything else though, forcing Solona to finally ask, “Know what?”

She offers Solona the saddest smile. “That I was wrong, of course.”

She feels her face crumble. Maker, she isn’t going to cry about this. She almost never cries, and she’s already done it once this week. There will be no more tears. “Only you weren’t. We both know you weren’t, so you can just say it now. Say it here, instead of doing it in front of everyone like he did. I know you like him better than me. I know you’ll take his side. So just say it.”

And then Wynne’s arms are wrapping around her. “Oh, my heartbroken girl. Of all the things I’m sorry for, that is perhaps the one that shames me the most. There are a thousand different kinds of strength, but none of them make you immune to heartbreak. I am sorry if I allowed my assessment of your strength to make it seem that your heart was a thing less breakable than his.”

When Wynne pulls away, her fingers are cool against Solona’s chin. “Did you really come here expecting me to berate you, child? Do you think loving Alistair is something you _should_ be ashamed of?”

She can only shake her head, afraid that if she opens her mouth, the tears will come.

“Then why do you think you ought to _be_ shamed for it? What the two of you shared was a beautiful thing that the rest of us are lucky to have witnessed. That it could not last does not diminish it’s value.” She presses a hand over Solona’s heart. “You keep it here. You keep what you had safe here, and one day, when you are an old lady—” her voice takes on a gently amused quality, “—as terribly old as me—you’ll be able to take it out and look at the beauty of it without anymore pain.”

Her voice is so… knowing. Solona thinks that maybe she shouldn’t ask, but she can’t help herself. “Who did you love?”

Wynne laugh is small but soft. “It was even more doomed than your love, I think. He was rather more than _almost_ a templar, and I was no Grey Warden, unbound by the Circle.”

She remembers a half heard conversation the woman had once with Alistair. “And you had a child?”

The amusement fades from Wynne’s face, leaving behind an expression more broken than any Solona has ever seen her wear. “Well, _that_ is another thing altogether. I won’t say that that is something I can take out and examine without pain. But, yes. I had a son.”

Solona leans forward and rests her face against Wynne’s shoulder. The woman still wears her Circle robes, and the feeling of the fabric is painfully familiar against Solona’s cheek. And then it stretches further, reaches straight through her memory of Neria to the memory of finely woven silk against her cheek and the smell of Prophet’s Laurel, and wakes a longing far older inside her.

When the tears come, as she cannot stop them from doing now, it’s for so much more than just Alistair. “Wynne?”

“Yes, my girl?”

The words are old, so old. They haven’t come out of her mouth in over a decade, but they come rushing up now, more shameful to her that loosing control of her magic, and she’s as helpless to stop them as her tears. “I want my mama.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. This one's a bummer. I really think that last scene there is the most depressing scene in this entire fic, so at least the worst is over with? I'm just... really sorry.


	33. Breathing All Contraries With the Same Wind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _The Tempest Inside_ has over 200 kudos now!!! You guys really can't know how much it means to me to get so much positive feedback from you all.
> 
> In my jubilation, I have posted some screencaps of Solona and a fanmix playlist [here](https://withthebreezesblown.tumblr.com/post/142073807082/the-tempest-inside-has-200-kudos-squee-so-i-made), if anyone is interested.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you all for all of your kind and generous flattery.

In the handful of relatively quiet days that follow the Landsmeet, it is Morrigan that she latches onto. Morrigan, who doesn’t look at her with any aching sympathy or try to make her talk about any of the things that she has nothing left to say about. They spend a great deal of time reading together, though, truth be told, Solona often finds her eyes unfocused on some middle distance rather than focused on the page as they’re meant to be. She tries her best to be quiet and unobtrusive, because she doesn’t know where she’ll go or what she’ll do if Morrigan tires of her constant presence.

She is certain her dismissal is coming when she looks up to catch the witch’s odd, pale eyes studying her. Instead, Morrigan tilts her head, a strand of dark hair falling across her features as she contemplates. “You look strange without an expression of slack jawed wonder on your silly face. ’Tis discomforting.”

She rises from the chair she where she was seated and tugs on Solona’s wrist. There is no pity in her face, but more kindness than Solona would once have guessed those sharp features could contain. “Come. I’m quite certain creatures like you are meant to save their stoic silences for the grave, where there will be time enough for them. Now, whilst you can, you’re meant to laugh like a trilling little bird that won’t quit fluttering about one’s head.”

 

 

“No, no; this one will suit her complexion much better!”

Solona is peering over Leliana’s shoulder as she and Morrigan argue over little pots of some sort of colored balm. The two of them had passed the former bard in Eamon’s courtyard, and when her inquiries into where they were going were met with Morrigan’s, “To buy makeup for Solona,” she had instantly, delightedly, attached herself to them.

Leliana holds the pot in her hands up beside Solona’s face and raises an eyebrow at Morrigan. “See? It’s very flattering, no?”

Morrigan considers, then holds another pot up on the other side of Solona’s face. Solona expects one of their usual arguments, is sure that they will end up leaving with nothing when the two can’t agree on anything. Which is just as well to her. This is decidedly _not_ what she agreed to.

A slow smile spreads over Morrigan’s face as her eyes dance between both pots and then Solona’s face. “Oh, yes. ’Twill be most flattering indeed.”

Solona has seen Morrigan smile more often than one might think an abrasive girl raised alone in the Wilds by her mad mother would, and more than one of those smiles has frightened her. But this—two women who’ve hardly exchanged a handful of words without venom in the nearly full year they’ve traveled together, now smiling in delighted harmony—terrifies.

Back in Morrigan’s room, sitting between her two friends while slender fingers prod under her chin and swipe at her face, she feels half indignantly accosted and half… not entirely unpleasantly cosseted. When Morrigan hands her the looking glass—the gold and gem encrusted one that she’d given her friend herself—she feels pretty in a way she’s never felt before. Alistair has— _had_ —a way of making her feel unbearably beautiful, but that was always something else, something outside of herself. She had been beautiful _to him_. Looking at her reflection in Morrigan’s room, this is a different thing altogether, a small, warm thing, and right now she will take all of the warmth she can get.

 

 

She’s standing alone in the same place where, just days ago, she admitted to Eamon that she knew Alistair was meant for something more than her. She cannot sleep. There’s something stirring, humming inside of her. She thinks it’s the taint. She thinks this is the sound of the darkspawn preparing themselves. This is the silent noise of a Blight about to begin in earnest.

There’s creaking sound and a wash of illumination from the candle mounted inside the door as it opens. Alistair is standing there, and when they make eye contact, he mutters, “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know you were—I’ll just—“

He’s already halfway back through the door when she calls out to him. “Alistair. You don’t have to go. If you don’t want _me_ to—I mean, _I_ can go.”

He hesitates for a moment, half in, half out, before moving to stand beside her. “You… can stay. If you want to.”

She stares out at the distant lights. It’s only after the silence settles over them that she realizes that this is the first time they’ve been alone together since the Landsmeet, and suddenly the silence is uncomfortable. She’s trying to think of something to say to him, something she would have said when they were friends, before they were… more. She thinks suddenly of how badly he’d needed to talk to someone, anyone, about Duncan so long ago, how _of course_ he’d needed someone to talk to. “Do you… do you want to talk about it? About… us?”

As soon as the words are out, she thinks they are stupid. She doesn’t feel any better when he makes a bitter sound and says, “I was pretty sure we’d already said everything that needed saying.”

“Are you going to be all right?” She doesn’t know why her voice drops to little more than a whisper when she asks.

He looks at her then, face pale in the moonlight. “Not really, no. But that doesn’t change the facts, does it? I love you. I’ll always love you. But there are things that are more important than what I want.” He looks away again. “I wish it were otherwise.”

 _Wish, wish, wish_. Something greedy rises up inside her, and she wishes for a thousand things; none of them are what she says. “I know. I just wish it were easier.” _Wish, wish, wish_.

He sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t think anything’s supposed to be easy about being a king. Or a Grey Warden. We have a job to do, so please… let’s focus on that. Thinking about you is just…” he actually winces as he says the words, “…too painful.” His eyes move to her lips and then her eyes. “And too tempting.”

She wants to tell him that whatever he wants, however much, however little, it’s his. Whatever he wants of her is _his_. But he’s already pulling away when he sucks in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I can’t—“

And then he’s gone.

 

 

Solona is, as it turns out, is the only member of their party who does not know how to ride a horse.

Well, that’s not _entirely_ true. Oghren has only ever ridden a bronto, but he figures horses are basically just real tall, skinny brontos, right?

Not exactly.

As they set off for Redcliffe, Oghren ends up riding with a not entirely pleased Leliana, because he will only agree to ride with her, Morrigan, or Solona, and Morrigan has announced that she’d rather be boiled alive than rubbed against by “a sweating, belching tankard of ale.” And Solona _is_ the other half of the problem.

Solona’s first choice of whom to ride with herself (well, her second choice, but the only one she’s willing to acknowledge) would have been Sten—large, steady, safe—but as he’s already the heaviest single burden a horse is going to have to bear, it seems unfair to the beast to ride with him. She ends up with Wynne. When she asks the woman where she learned to ride, she’s treated to a long story about a sick bann who’d sent for a healer from the Circle and Wynne’s first dazed foray into the world. She seems to understand that there is a thing inside of Solona that she does not want to look at, that she is okay as long as she does not have to look, because she tells another story after that, and then another. They’re stories to make her laugh, most of them, but they all end the same: with Wynne returning to the Circle. If the old woman thinks Solona isn’t on to her, she’s wrong. Wynne hasn’t mentioned Solona returning to the Circle after this (assuming she survives) once since that time after they ran into the elf she’d mentored in the Brecilian Forest, but Solona had made her opinions clear enough then. When, months ago, Wynne had given her unwanted opinions about Solona’s relationship Alistair, she had clammed up, put on a liar’s untroubled face. When Wynne told her to go back to the Circle, she’d hidden nothing. So the woman hasn’t brought it up again. And what she’s trying to do now isn’t working. However content Wynne may have been with it, returning to the Circle is _not_ a happy ending to Solona. She wants a story with a _happy_ ending. She isn’t sure right now that they exist.

Solona doesn’t realize until it’s too late, when they’ve already made camp in the middle of nowhere, a full day’s ride from Denerim, that she doesn’t even have her own tent anymore. They’d sold it months ago when she’d stopped using it. Though Zevran is the first to offer to let her share, with a silky smile that makes Alistair look ready to pull his sword from its sheath, she ends up with Morrigan, not least of all because her tent is larger than anyone else’s.

Watching the light from the fire play against the fabric of the tent, she cannot sleep.

“Morrigan?”

There is a long sigh. “Is it not customary for one to sleep when one has lain oneself down on one’s thin and miserly bedroll?”

Once she would have been embarrassed by the girl’s harsh response, would have fallen silent. Now, she knows perfectly well that nothing more than blind fortitude will allow her to slip past the wall of vexation the girl uses to ward others off with such vehemence. “Do you know a story with a happy ending?”

She expects a snort, another dismissal. Instead, after a hesitation, the witch begins to speak with a hint of uncertainty in her usual cocky voice. “Once there was a bird who was kept in a gilded cage.” The mockery rises in her voice for a moment, though not unkindly. “’Tis, perhaps, a good thing she was raised so, for she was a bird soft and sweet as a berry, and would surely have been crushed just like one in some creature’s merciless jaw had she not been so imprisoned. But even so, there came a day when her cage could not hold her any longer, for there was a battle so large that it drew even the little bird out of her cage and into it. And so she came flittering to the Wilds where she met a cat. Now, everyone knows ’tis a fact that cats are solitary creatures and may eat birds when given the chance. But the bird and the cat had a common enemy, and so it was agreed that the cat would not eat the bird, no matter how incessantly she flitted about the poor cat’s head, chirping. Even worse, the bird kept about her a loud, slobbering mabari, and many times the cat was sorely tempted to scratch out his eyes and flay open his guts—but their common enemy was a dark, unnatural thing, and so, against all odds, the cat preserved in not maiming anyone. After a great deal of galavanting from one end of the land to the other, the time came for the little bird to face the terrible enemy. Now, despite all logic and reason, the cat realized that she had come to treasure the soft, sweet, flittering, twittering little bird. And she decided that, even though she knew the price that must be paid to push back such darkness, she would not see her treasured friend destroyed by it. And so the cat did what she must, and the bird did what she must, and even the infuriating mabari did what he must, and the darkness was kept at bay, and they all lived gloriously.” The tone of narration gone, her voice is amused when she speaks again. “’Tis a happy enough ending for you, I expect?”

Solona cannot help smiling. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the wishful type, Morrigan.”

“I am no such thing. You, my friend, will live gloriously. I will see it so.”

“Oh? What is the price that you’ll pay for that? What exactly do you think we all must do?”

Morrigan sighs again, an exhalation of pure tribulation. “If this is how you question my stories, I shan’t tell you anymore.”

Ignoring the show of animosity, Solona reaches for her friend’s hand in the darkness. “Thank you for it. The story.”

She does not mention that she still does not know if she believes that stories with happy endings can ever be true.


	34. No Trembler in the World's Storm-Troubled Sphere

By the time they reach Redcliffe, the darkspawn are upon it. It takes the better part of the day and the help of all Eamon’s men gathered there to rid the village of them. They check on the villagers once again boarded up in the Chantry. At this point, she thinks it’s a miracle anyone is left at all.

That night, up on the battlements of Redcliffe Castle after the sun has set, out in the distance, past the darkened silhouette of the tavern Bella has rechristened The Warden’s Rest, she can see lights moving. If she closes her eyes, she can almost hear them there. Darkspawn. She is certain what she guessed at in Denerim was right now. They are gathering.

 

 

Over the next two days, she thinks she must have doubled the total number of darkspawn she’s killed. Wave after wave of darkspawn descends on them. And this is only a Blight barely begun. This is only a fraction of the horror that will come erupting from the earth if they fail. She wonders how anyone ever managed to stop the first Blights at all, already raging when efforts were mounted against them.

She is exhausted. All she wants is to sleep and sleep and sleep until she wakes to the world bright and better. But if there were ever any peaceful, dreamless nights for mages, there certainly weren’t any for Grey Wardens during a Blight.

It’s after midnight when a rider comes racing through the castle gates. If it not for the nightmare she would have been asleep. She’s sitting by the window, wondering if Alistair had the same nightmare—that happens often with their Blight dreams—when she sees the horse come galloping into the courtyard with a spray of dust and gravel that can mean only one thing: trouble.

Without a thought, she’s halfway down the stairs before she catches herself, stops still, one foot on the step below the other. This is it, she thinks without even knowing what ill news is on its way to them. This is the last big breath drawn before the leap, and who knows where she’ll surface. If she’ll surface. So she just stands there, one hand on the stone wall, and breathes. Until, with a rapid thunder of footsteps, a body crashes into hers, and she finds herself twisting, arms whipping out and clutching to keep her from flying the rest of the way down the stairs. The chest she finds herself embracing is painfully familiar. _Maker’s breath_ , she thinks, _it’s a wonder there’s ever been any creature that has not gone flying when that boy uses his body as a battering ram_ ** _intentionally_**.

She yanks her arms away quickly, pushing herself back against the wall, aside, so he can just pass and ignore her if he chooses to. “Sorry! Sorry. Stupid place to stop.”

“Solona? Are you okay?” His hands reach out for her arms, as though to steady her, then drop back to his side.

Her laugh sounds wild, even to her. “Me? I’m all peaches and sunshine, eagerly awaiting out next thrilling adventure, which is surely arriving now for us—you must have seen the rider—it was the dreams, wasn’t it? Why you were awake? I bet we had the same one—“ While she’s babbling hopelessly, stupidly, something else comes spilling out, without her intending to say it at all. “It’s so much worse without you.”

When he leans in toward her, her eyes go round and her breath freezes up, but he leans straight past her until his head is resting on the wall above her shoulder. He still isn’t touching anywhere. He _is_ , she thinks, _sniffing_ her though. “So much worse,” he echoes in agreement. And then, “Did you know it’s been exactly a year today since we met?”

“Is it really? I should have realized—that makes tomorrow a year since—“ She feels a rush of guilt. She had not even realized that the anniversary of the battle at Ostagar was approaching.

“It is. That’s not what I meant though. I remember because it was my name day when we met.”

She processes this. “It’s… it’s your name day? Today?”

He nods, his chin bumping into her shoulder.

“Oh, Alistair! You should have told me! I would have—“

“What? Asked the darkspawn nicely to cease trying to take over Thedas for the day so that we could have a party with tiny cakes?”

She reaches into the purse at her belt for the object the Tranquil proprietor at The Wonders of Thedas had found for her. She’d asked him, months ago, to keep an eye out. If she’d gotten it before the Landsmeet, she’d have given it to Alistair already. In the days since, she hadn’t found the right time or the courage.

“I would have at least wrapped this.”

When she pushes the tiny stone golem into his hand, he pulls away from the wall to see what she’s given him.

A smile spreads slowly over his face. “You found me a golem. Maker, you really do listen to everything I say, don’t you?”

“Yes.” It occurs to her that although she has a rough idea of his age, she doesn’t actually know it. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.” He considers this a moment, then looks up at her frowning. “When was your name day? It’s been a year. You must have had one in there somewhere.”

She just shrugs. “I’m a mage.”

He brows draw together. “…Aaaand? I’m pretty sure that mages come into the world the same way as everyone else.”

“The Chantry considered us a year older than we were before each First Day. Sometimes there were even biscuits, though I think they were actually for First Day, not meant as a name day treat… I don’t think the Chantry really considers the birth of a mage something to celebrate.”

He’s just staring, the anger darkening his face moment by moment. “You don’t even know you’re own name day?” He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “You could have at least told me on First Day… I would have… I don’t know, done something. How old are _you_?”

“Eighteen, now.”

Again, he stares at her. “Seventeen is terribly young to have your entire future taken away from you.”

His anger and his sympathy are sweet, but she can’t help laughing. “Taken away? Oh, Alistair. This was a gift.”

He shakes his head, but for a moment there’s the most wistful smile on his face, and she thinks he understands exactly what she means. When the smile fades, the expression on his face is that of a man picking back up a heavy burden he’s only just set down. He gestures for her to go on ahead of him. “Shall we go find out what’s gone to shit now, my lady?”

Her own smile disappears instantly. Once, being called his lady had been an endearment to send her heart tripping uncertainly over itself. But now she’s heard her name come from his mouth in tones that no endearment can rival, and, “my lady,” feels as cold and distant as though he’s told her he doesn’t even know her at all.

It must feel the same way he does every time, in front of too many prying eyes and listening ears, afraid of giving anything away, she calls him, “my King.”

 

 

The horde has turned toward Denerim. _That’s_ what’s gone to shit now. The rider who had come sprinting in is Riordan, with news he absorbed directly from the horde itself. They will set out at dawn with their army in a frantic race to get to Denerim in time to save it. Before she can try to snatch what sleep she may, Riordan tells her, there’s something she and Alistair must know.

Standing side by side in Riordan’s chamber, they learn exactly what, “In death, sacrifice,” means.

“The essence of the archdemon is destroyed… and so is the Grey Warden.”

Alistair’s face is pale as Riordan’s words sink in. His eyes flicker to Solona for an instant before fixing back on the man. “Meaning… the Grey Warden who kills the archdemon… dies?”

Riordan’s expression is sympathetic, but he does not mince his words. “Yes. Without the archdemon, the Blight ends. It is the only way.”

Solona’s first thought is the same one that came to her after Alistair told her about the Calling. _This is the price_. Her second is that Alistair is King. And he’s also Alistair. All the pain that she’s caused him by what she chose at the Landsmeet, there is still no one who she wouldn’t sacrifice first to keep him safe, and not because it means protecting the future that she wants so badly to come from him. Because he’s Alistair. Because she loves him.

Her third thought is that Riordan is the only Grey Warden in all of Ferelden who knows all the things Grey Wardens are supposed to know. Things like _this_. Things like how to prepare and perform a Joining. A thousand other things. He’s invaluable. He’ll be Warden Commander once the leaders in Weisshaupt figure out what has happened, surely. Her fourth thought is that there are only three Wardens in all of Ferelden. And only _one_ of them is entirely expendable.

She does not _want_ to say it. There is something fractured inside of her, a hollow, aching place where there was something warm and wonderful, but she still wants _more_ … more sunsets and more stars. She wants to see what will come of the sacrifice that Wynne says will one day cause her no more pain. But Alistair is Alistair, and Riordan is essential, and she is only a girl who was never supposed to have had anything but her magic to begin with. She wants to cry out that it isn’t fair, but isn’t it? What has she done to deserve otherwise? What has she ever done but stumble with blind luck through all of this without falling?

She thinks of Neria’s once smiling face, stamped and bland and lifeless. She thinks of how that would have been her without Duncan there to grant her a reprieve that she may or may not have deserved. She thinks of everything since then— _brilliant_ and _alive_ —sun and stars and Alistair’s hands in her hair and Leliana’s laughter and the word, “sister,” on Morrigan’s lips and how once she even saw Sten smile, of Zevran swearing fealty to her out of friendship rather than desperation, of Wynne rolling her eyes but relenting and telling a tale entirely about griffons as she and Alistair grin at each other in triumphant delight, of Shale calling her, “you,” and not, “it,” in a voice that proves that there is something soft and not stone at all inside her somewhere, of Oghren teaching her an “ancient dwarven gesture of victory against darkspawn” (it had nothing to do with darkspawn—nor was it even, Alistair had explained, exclusive to the dwarves). She thinks of what Alistair said to her once about fair trades, and all of _this_ — ** _it was_**. So she says what she does not _want_ to say. “Then I will take that final blow myself.”

Alistair’s head whips toward her so fast, it’s a miracle he doesn’t injure his neck, but before he can speak, Riordan is responding in his kindly, quiet voice that somehow demands that they listen respectfully. “It warms my heart to see such courage, but do not hurry so to sacrifice your life.” He tells her how the Calling won’t spare him much longer. How he is the one with the least to sacrifice and the most reason to do so. And she is grateful. She is so, so grateful when he tells her that unless he fails, this is his burden and not hers.


	35. Death and Love Are yet Contending for Their Prey

She is so tired that she thinks even she, plagued by nightmares as she is, may manage a few hours of sleep when she drags herself into her bedroom. She’s exhausted and distracted, and that is perhaps why she doesn’t realize someone is standing by the fire until she’s halfway to the bed.

“Don’t be alarmed. It is only I.”

Morrigan.

She makes it the rest of the way to the bed and sinks there at the edge, looking up at her friend, concerned. She’s the one who wanders pitifully into Morrigan’s chambers, looking for companionship or unplacating reassurances. She cannot guess what might cause Morrigan to seek _her_ out. “Morrigan? Are you all right?”

“I am well. ’Tis you who are in danger. I have a plan, you see. A way out. The loop in your hole.” Her eyes are bright, her expression eager.

For some reason she cannot name, it raises the hair at the back of her neck. This is, after all, a secret that even Alistair hadn’t known. “And how do you know about this?”

Morrigan just smiles. It is the look of someone offering a child a treat she is certain will be wildly beyond their greatest expectation. “I know a great many things. How I know is not quite as important as what I am offering you, however. I offer a way out. A way out for all the Grey Wardens, that there need be no sacrifice. A ritual… performed on the eve of battle, in the dark of night.”

Gooseflesh rises all over her body to join the hair at her neck. Despite the heat of the fire, she shivers as she tells Morrigan the one thing that has been running through her mind so often of late. “Nothing comes without a price.”

“Perhaps. But that price need not be so unbearable, especially if there is much to be gained. All I ask is that you listen to what I have to offer, nothing more.”

Her tone reminds Solona of Anora. So certain that she is so the only one who sees things clearly. The difference, she has to remind herself, is that Anora feels it is her right and duty to tell all and sundry what she knows best. Morrigan can only be _bothered_ to do so because she cares for Solona. So her answer is hesitant but open. “Very well. What is your plan?”

If she knew the witch less well she would not have seen it. That short lived flicker that tells Solona that she understands that what she is about to say is cruel, and she’s sorry for it, but the smooth expression that covers it tells Solona she believes this must be done. _The cat did what she must_. Once she begins, she does not betray what that look has told Solona; she does not fumble over her words. “What I propose is this: convince Alistair to lay with me. Here, tonight. And from this ritual a child shall be conceived within me. The child will bear the taint, and when the archdemon is slain, its essence will seek the child like a beacon. At this early stage, the child can absorb that essence and not perish. The archdemon is destroyed, with no Grey Warden dying in the process.”

It is so absurd, it’s like listening to someone talk about something else entirely. Because she cannot process the idea of Alistair laying with Morrigan, she says, blandly, as though this is merely an academic discussion, “So the child becomes a darkspawn?”

Morrigan’s voice is still that calm, soothing tone. So certain that she can make Solona understand that this is what’s best, that she will convince her. So certain that it _is_ what’s best. “Not at all. It will become something different: a child born with the soul of an Old God. After this is done, you will allow me to walk away… and you do not follow. Ever. The child will be mine to raise as I wish.”

Her mind is swirling, concentric circles growing closer and closer to some point that she’s holding herself away from as long as she can. “Why Alistair? Why not Riordan?”

“Even if I thought Riordan could be convinced, he is unsuitable. I need one who has not been tainted for long—it must be him, and it must be tonight.” A touch of impatience now. She doesn’t understand why Solona can’t see how a great a thing it is she’s offering.

“You actually think Alistair will agree to this?” Closer and closer.

Morrigan’s face hardens, and Solona understands that now she is bringing out her cruelest argument, the one she would have spared her if only she’d been more reasonable, more willing to see things her way. “If you care for him as you seem to, you will convince him to. Consider what the alternative might be. Do you think Alistair will fail to do his duty as the future king and save his country? And if you take the blow instead, he loses the woman he loves. How do you think he would feel about that? I think you have many good reasons to tell him to save his own life. I think you should consider them carefully.”

And suddenly the swirling stops. Her mind veers away from that image of Alistair and Morrigan, _together_. It won’t be him. No matter what. If Riordan fails, then she will be sorry, so terribly sorry, but _it won’t be him_. She doesn’t need Morrigan’s magic to promise herself that. And the witch is right about one thing. If Solona asks, he will do this, what Morrigan is suggesting. He’d do it for her. But she’s asked him to do too much that he does not want to all ready, so much more than was fair to him. She will ask no more.

“No. I won’t agree to this.”

Morrigan is stunned. This is not how she expected her offer to be received. She is silent a long moment before she speaks, sharp, angry, loud. “Do not let your foolish pride condemn you!” Her voice softens. Entreating. “No Grey Warden asked for the sacrifice that is now demanded of them, and I offer you all a way out. Will you not reconsider?”

She just meets Morrigan’s eye and slowly, steadily shakes her head. _No_.

“Then you are a fool. I will not stand by and watch you waste this opportunity. Die, if you feel it is worthwhile. Or be overshadowed, I care not.” She waves her hands, gesturing sharply when she speaks, an unusual display of passion for the witch.

But then, Solona understands, it is not often that the girl’s heart is broken. She doesn’t hold the bitterness of her words against her. But doesn’t Morrigan understand? Solona _needs_ her. She needs them all. They are, each of them, the reason she has strength enough to do this. Her hand reaches out, grasping for Morrigan’s. “Please don’t do this. Don’t go.”

She snatches her hand away. “Would that I could have helped you. That is your doing, however, and not mine.” Solona expects her to storm from the room then, with nothing more said, but she pauses for just an instant, laying her hand on top of Solona’s head. “Fare you well, my friend. I do what I must, now, and so shall you.”

And then Solona is alone.

 

 

In the morning Alistair, who will eat anything, even his own worst concoctions, does not eat. There’s _cheese_ on the table. And he isn’t eating it. When she notices and looks closer, she thinks he has not slept at all. He looks dazed, eyes bloodshot enough that she wonders if he’s been crying. She follows him into the hallway, hand reaching for his shoulder of its own accord. “Alistair?”

He flinches, actually jerks himself away from her hand. He says nothing and won’t look at her, eyes fixed on the wall.

She just stands there stupidly, hand still raised. Perhaps he’s decided he hates her for what she’s done after all. Her hand falls back to her side after a moment, and she is turning to walk away when he finally speaks. “Wait. I’m… sorry. Solona. I’m sorry. What did you want?”

He still isn’t looking at her when she turns back to him. “You don’t look… well.”

He grimaces. “I don’t look well? Quick, call in the Circle’s best healers. The King of Ferelden isn’t _well_.” He snorts.

She thinks that she’s never heard him sound like this before. And she wonders about prices that must be paid, and maybe she was wrong. Maybe there’s nothing worth this reforging that she never wanted him to endure after all. “Here.” She reaches out, places one hand along his jaw, and turns her focus inwards, calling up a rejuvenation spell for him.

Before she can finish it, his fingers are around her wrist, roughly pulling her hand away, bloodshot eyes angry as they meet hers. “Don’t. Just don’t. I’m not—you shouldn’t—just don’t.”

She doesn’t understand what she’s done to anger him. She doesn’t follow when he walks away.

 

 

When they’re finally ready to march, it’s Shale who asks the question Solona knew was coming. “Where is the swamp witch?”

“Gone. She’s gone.”

This causes a stir. She expects Alistair to tell her how he _told her so_ , but he says nothing, doesn’t even look up at her after the announcement.

Brushing past all of her companions, she walks beside Riordan, recognizing the opportunity for what it is: the last chance she’ll get for months probably to talk to someone who knows any of the things she ought to about being a Grey Warden. He tries to describe the details of a Joining and assures her that Weisshaupt will send someone to assist her as soon as they are able.

She raises an eyebrow. “Assist me? You don’t seriously think anyone is going to make an eighteen-year-old girl a Warden Commander.”

He just smiles. “Any eighteen-year-old girl? No. But _you_ , I think, have proven yourself quite thoroughly now.”

As it turns out, she has news for _him_ that, until now, the Wardens had not been aware of. They knew that darkspawn were born from broodmothers, but they’d assumed that the broodmothers themselves were born from darkspawn as well. He stares at her in horror. “They are…” He shakes his head. “Weisshaupt will need to know. The implications for female Wardens’ Callings…”

And that leads to the very worst revelation that he has for her. He tells her with a pained expression that suggests he wishes it were news he did not have to give her on top of everything, on top of every price she’s already paid. The roughly thirty years that Wardens get before their Calling? That was during the four hundred Blightless years that came before this one. Increased exposure to darkspawn, to the taint, a Blight… these things all increase the rate at which the taint spreads through the Warden. Her and Alistair? They’ll probably be _lucky_ to get fifteen years before they’re driven, half mad, down into the lightless Deep Roads.

 

 

When they stumble across a group of travelers defending themselves against a cluster of darkspawn, she realizes there’s a mage in their number well before she’s able to get a good look. When she finally takes in the mop of dark hair falling into a pale face, she utters his name once, and then she’s running forward. Jowan doesn’t look entirely certain that this isn’t some kind of attack, but he doesn’t defend himself. He just stands there, surprised for a moment, before he manages to return her embrace.

She doesn’t know how to tell him what’s come over her. She doesn’t know how to say that since she saw him last she’s gained and the lost _everything_ , that she’s been reborn as someone different twice over, and that somehow this makes him, a piece of a life so far behind her, dearer to her for it. When she pulls away, she sees how the people traveling with him are eying her with suspicion, clearly concerned, given her blood spattered, sword wielding wild state, with her proximity to the man who has been leading them through the darkness. She smiles at him as she wipes a smudge of blood, probably left there by herself, from his cheek. In that gesture she hopes that he can see that she’s wiping away so much more that’s passed between them. When she speaks, she doesn’t call him by the name she's known him as again, understanding that it is something _he_ has left behind. “Stay your course, Levyn. Redemption suits you.”


	36. The Hour When Earth’s Foundations Fled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to express my enormous gratitude to [TrulyCertain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyCertain/pseuds/TrulyCertain) for her help with and positivity about these next few chapters. Actually, not just for that. For her kind words and compliments throughout the writing of this that gave me back my enthusiasm when I'd all but lost it more than once, and most particularly for being my first fandom friend. She's a lovely person, and her writing is amazing; I cannot recommend it highly enough.

When they reach Denerim and the madness begins, Solona learns that past a certain point chaos becomes almost peaceful. She walks through the pandemonium and out the other end into a state almost like meditation. Sword in one hand and a fistful of magic in the other, it’s like wading into Lake Calenhad and pushing the water back by sheer force and will, only the further she wades into the darkspawn, the higher the sea of blood rises around her.

When they cut their way through the mass blocking the gates, Riordan tells her that her companions will have to split into two parties. She wants to explain to him that, _no, she needs them_ ** _all_** _, every one of them_ , that she’s already lost more than she can spare, but she just nods. When she puts Sten in charge of the party that will not accompany her, he calls her, “kadan,” and she has to rise onto the tips of her toes to throw her arms around his neck.

She wants to send Alistair with him, safe and far enough from the archdemon that at least he can’t die _like that_ , but Riordan advises against it. She’s still trying to decide what to do when Muffin moves beside her, shoving his head determinedly under her hanging hand.

She raises an eyebrow as she looks down at him. “You think you’re coming with me, do you?”

He whines, the same pitiful noise he uses to finagle another scrap of food or more belly rubs from her. She trails her fingers along his nose and rolls her eyes. “Of course you are.”

Alistair, like, Muffin, makes it clear he isn’t waiting for her decision. He plants himself on the other side of the mabari, arms crossed, face set.

There’s a tense moment as she stares at him, and he determinedly does not meet her gaze.

It is true enough that if she and Riordan both fall before this is finished, there’s no one but him who _can_ finish it. She thinks for one delirious moment that she should have done as Morrigan advised. There’s no time for regret now though. There’s only what comes next.

Finally he looks at her. “I’m with you, Solona. Whatever else—whatever—for this, I’m _with you_.”

She’s the one who looks away first. “Fine. Whatever. Wynne, with us.” If Alistair is with her, then she’s determined to have the healer there as well to ensure he survives it. There will be no mistakes like Redcliffe.

In the end, she chooses the final member of her own party based simply on this: if slaying the archdemon falls to her, she wants Lelaina’s affection there to remind her that she is strong enough for this.

She bids the rest of them farewell one by one. Zevran kisses her on each cheek and then once, more chastely and sweetly that she would have thought him capable, on the lips. Before he can step away, she presses entire contents of the purse where she keeps her coin into his hand. “Freedom is expensive, my friend. I know what price I paid for mine. I wouldn’t see you left unable to pay for yours.”

When Oghren tells her that today he will be the warrior that she—a mage—has taught him to be, she throws her arms around him too. When he pulls his face away from her chest, he grins up at her. “Too bad you don’t wear them Tevinter robes.” And then he chuckles, that particular blend childishness and ribaldry that is uniquely his, and even as she’s rolling her eyes and pushing him away with a palm against his forehead, she can’t help smiling at him.

Even Shale she embraces, cheek scraping against rough stone. “If you think about it, darkspawn are kind of just great big wingless pigeons. So go have fun.”

When she walks away from them, she doesn’t allow herself to look back.

 

 

By the time they make it first through Denerim’s market and then the Alienage, they are covered in blood.

“ _Wait_!”

They stop, staring at her in concern as she scrambles to find some scrap of fabric not yet soiled. Finally she rips a piece of tunic away, then grabs Leliana’s shoulder, pulling her closer as she wipes at the darkspawn blood near the girl’s mouth. Riordan’s words about how little time she will have before the Calling claims her are ringing in her ears as she glares at her friend, and her fear comes out in her voice like anger. “You have to be careful! Don’t you understand?! That’s _death_ , Leliana. Liquid fucking _death_.”

And then the archdemon screams in the distance. It is the first time Solona has seen it anywhere but her nightmares. It moves over the city with terrifying speed, weaving between the tallest towers until a figure detaches itself from one as it passes, leaping straight through the air before it lands on the creature. Without thought, her hand reaches out, grabbing Alistair’s. “Riordan,” she breathes, and in that one word is a prayer and a blessing and all of her hope. An instant later, the creature screams, louder than before, and jolts, progress suddenly halted as its wings beat frantically and it attempts to claw at its own back.

There’s spasming, jerky movement and more screaming, and it’s impossible for her to see what’s happening from where she is until, as the dragon surges upward and lets out its most piercing screech yet, a figure falls away from it.

Her held breath rushes out of her. “Oh, Maker, _no_.”

It was his burden. Unless he fell. She wants to laugh hysterically. Well, yes. He _fell_. And now it is hers.

She drops Alistair’s hand without looking at him. “Let’s go finish this.”

 

 

When the wounded creature finally lies in a collapsed heap, too damaged to retaliate any further, as Solona gasps for breath, for mana, for her sense to return to her for just a moment before she gives it up entirely, she wonders if the stories will one day say that the Hero of Ferelden defeated the archdemon in single combat in some act of lone valor. If so, they will not be true. More than Riordan lie dead. Lives were sacrificed by the hundreds to put her here. The sun is just beginning to set, burning as brilliantly red and gold as it ever has for her, and she’s grateful for this, face tilted back, gasping. Until she sees Alistair, hand shifting around the hilt of his sword in a way that’s so familiar to her. The way he braces himself before he charges. Dropping her sword where she stands, she moves faster even that she moved trying to bring the archdemon down, planting herself in front of him.

“ _No_ , Alistair.”

He frowns at her, nostrils flaring. “I know you said to Riordan that you would take the final blow, but let me. This is my duty.”

Without her deciding to, her hands come up to shove ineffectually at his chest. He doesn’t even budge. “This is _my_ duty as much as it is yours. We’re _both_ Grey Wardens.”

He catches her wrists. “But I’ve got one up on you.” His lips twitch, and she can’t stand that he can smile _now_ , when he hasn’t smiled at her in days. She wants to hit him again. She wants to hit him for real. “I’m not just a Grey Warden. I’m the King. And I want to be a good king. And this…” And then he just stops. He draws in a deep breath and leans down until their foreheads touch. “I know how I feel about you. I won’t let you die, not when I can do something about it.”

He’s staring at her so hard, she feels like he’s trying to tell her something more, but she’s distracted, paying more attention to the hand that’s wormed itself out of his grip and pulled her dagger loose from its sheath. She’s only got one chance at this, she knows that. A paralysis spell would be easier, but he’ll annul it too fast. She has one chance to slam the pommel of the dagger against his temple just the way he showed her how to knock an enemy unconscious. But first, she kisses him. Partly so that when she throws her arms around her neck, he won’t realize that she’s just giving herself a better angle. Partly because this is the last chance she’ll ever have, and like the Void is she not going to take it.

When their lips part, she whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

And then she swings.

It isn’t hard enough. She knows as soon as she makes contact. He’s staggering, though, disoriented, and it’s the only chance left, so she takes it while he’s still holding one hand up to the trickle of blood at his hairline. She runs flat out, using what little mana has built back up to pull Spellweaver to her as she goes, and when she reaches the archdemon, she drives the blade straight through its skull without hesitation.

Maker’s breath, but it’s _bright_. The sword is vibrating, a terrible, aching pressure building up from it, but she doesn’t let go. It’s brighter than the sun. Bright as Alistair, staring after her with wide eyes. He is the last thing she sees.


	37. By Some Prodigious Destiny, I Woke

She aches. Like after her Joining, in every inch of her body, she _aches_.

Funny, she didn’t expect the Void to feel exactly like the worst parts of being alive.

Or to smell like Alistair’s hair. Too exhausted to open her eyes, she draws in a deep breath and makes a happy noise as she releases it. It’s not such a bad trade, as prices paid go, and she knows a thing or two about that. Bruised, aching pain in exchange for the scent of Alistair for all eternity? She’ll take it.

Instantly something shifts all around her. “Lona? _Fuck_ ; thank you, Maker; thank you, Morrigan; thank you, thank you, thank you…”

His lips are at her temple, his arms pulling her closer against him. She doesn’t understand.

And then she’s forcing her eyes open, pulling away from him to look around. “Is it not dead? I didn’t kill it?”

But it is. Plainly, right there in front of her, it is.

When she turns back to him, he’s frozen, his expression so pained it hurts her to look at it. Fear and shame and relief, and she doesn’t understand.

And he thanked _Morrigan_ , who he hates, who he has never trusted, who _left_ them.

And then she understands.

 

 

There are still darkspawn to kill. Even as they retreat by the hundreds, there are dozens in the streets. And when the streets finally do fall quiet, they don’t remain so long. Doors open and pale, wary faces stream out, approaching her like Leliana approached the Urn of Sacred Ashes, awed fingers reaching, as though she is so blessed by the Maker they might absorb some of it themselves through touch. When they find the rest of their companions, Shale lifts Solona up onto her stone shoulder, above the grasping fingers, and she’s grateful for it, reeling as she still is.

Back at Eamon’s estate, she soaks for so long in her bath water that she has to reheat it twice, hardly able to feel the heat even as the steam rises all around her. And then she walks straight past the tray of food that’s been brought up for her and retreats as deeply into the plush bedding as she is able. For once, there are no dreams.

 

 

She isn’t ready for this—doesn’t think she could _ever_ be ready for _this_ —when she goes to find Alistair that afternoon, but she can think of no more reasons to put it off. He’s standing in front of a desk, a massive structure of bloodwood and gilded edges, glaring at a paper in his hands. When he looks up at her, he puts the paper down blindly and slowly seats himself at the edge of the desk, eyes never leaving hers. His expression is caught between wary, expectant, and determined.

She closes the door but only takes a handful of steps forward before she just stops. “Oh, Alistair. _What were you thinking_?”

“What was I thinking?” A stubborn defiance settles over his face. “I was thinking that you would do _exactly what you did_. I was thinking that you are _always_ too willing to sacrifice your happiness and _yourself_ , and, for once, I _wasn’t going to let you_!

“I was thinking that I may not trust Morrigan, and I may very well believe that if she wanted something badly enough, she might forfeit even you to get it, but that even I could see that she cares about you. She came to me because she didn’t want you to _die_! I did what I did because, like I told you on top of Fort Drakon, I’m _not_ going to let you die when I could do something about it! I’d still have been the one to kill it if I could, because I didn’t absolutely trust _her_ promises enough to stake _your_ life on it, but she and I both knew you wouldn’t give me that choice!”

She _wants_ to be angry at him. For a moment, she wants to be upset and betrayed and to beat her fists against his chest and open her mouth to yell at him louder and more angrily that his rising voice. And then she looks at him again, and all she can see is the man who didn’t hesitate to buy back her life from the jaws of the archdemon with a piece of himself. The anger leaves her in a rush that pushes her forward, arms flinging themselves around his neck.

If she expects him to embrace her back, he does not. He tenses beneath her, hands clenching on the edge of the desk. She pulls away awkwardly, unsure what to do when everything she does seems to be wrong.

“Don’t,” he says quietly. “Don’t give me that look. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She hesitates, looks down at his still white knuckles squeezing the desk. “Didn’t I?”

His head bows so that he doesn’t have to look at her, and he as he draws a deep breath, she understands that what he is about to say is a confession. Whatever it is, she thinks, he is absolved. He is absolved, if by nothing else, then by the fact that he is Alistair, who showed her the stars and taught her how to not be lonely and afraid anymore.

“I… She offered to take your form. I told her not to. I just… I just wanted to make sure you were safe. _That_ seemed like… a whole different kind of betrayal. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t… She said there was no point in loving you at all if I didn’t love you enough to do what had to be done. And then she… changed. And I let her. I shouldn’t have. And I just can’t… I _can’t fucking stand_ that the last time I touched you, _it wasn’t you_.”

The only surprising thing about how much what he says hurts is that it hurts her more for him than herself. She settles herself carefully on the edge of the desk beside him and then pries his fingers up from where they are still gripping the wood. Twining her fingers with his, her palm against the back of his hand, she brings it up and presses her cheek against it.

“There. You’re touching me right now.”

When he raises his head, there are tears trickling down his cheeks. “That’s not—I—“

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter, because I’m sitting here right now telling you it doesn’t. If you hadn’t, then I wouldn’t be. If you think you’ve done something wrong, I forgive you. And for everything else? For all of it? Thank you. I will never, ever stop being grateful for every second of it.”

He presses his palm more firmly against her cheek and leans forward until his forehead touches her. “Andraste have mercy, _it’s not fair_ , Solona. It _isn’t fucking fair_.”

“I know that. You know that. You’re supposed to be the one who’s come to terms with it. I’m the one still having the tantrum about it.”

And then his arms are around her waist, pulling her up and closer, while his head drops to rest on her collarbone, and it’s familiar, so familiar, except for the warm wetness of his tears as he stops trying to hold them in.


	38. You Were a Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to every single person who has read this. Thank you again to everyone who has given kudos or commented, because those things mean probably way more to me than they should.
> 
> Before I wrote this, I hadn't seriously written anything in a decade. (Yes. A decade.) Writing this has been my love letter to Dragon Age Origins, but at some point it's also become a love letter to writing, which I had forgotten how much I love. I'd forgotten how it felt to put _myself_ into something, and then to have someone appreciate that. So to everyone who has shown appreciation for this fic: it really does mean the world to me.

_You were a fire. In the frenzy of memory_  
_You are not ash today. You are the glory._  
_-Jorges Luis Borges, from the poem “To John Keats”_

 

Her time at the Royal Palace is strange. Vigil’s Keep is being prepared for the Wardens, but it takes weeks even to find out that Wardens are being sent to her from Orlais and the Anderfels, and they won’t arrive for months. In the uncertain time in-between, Alistair insists she stay. Because she has nowhere else to go and no excuse not to, she does. Her friends leave her one by one. The first to go is Oghren; she helps him braid his beard in the morning before he sets out to see Felsi. And then each of the others: Sten to deliver his long awaited news, Leliana on some Chantry mission to reclaim the Sacred Ashes. Wynne and Shale leave together, bickering amicably, and she feels a fierce pang of jealousy of the two of them. She wakes one day to find on the pillow beside her a runestone and a note from Zevran: _Did you know that Solona means sunshine? You are a light in dark places, my friend. I will stop by Vigil’s Keep when you have settled in. We all need a little sunshine now and again, yes?_ She doesn’t know how he got in and out without waking her when she barely sleeps to begin with, but she is grateful he did not disappear without at least this. When she touches the runestone, it lights up with a soft golden glow, and she understands why he’s given it to her. How many times has he seen her jerk from sleep, snatching magelight from the Fade as she struggles to orient herself? He understands fear and darkness. He’s given her light.

And then it’s just herself and Muffin and Alistair.

Well, no. Most days it’s just Alistair and Eamon, and she is a ghost, following Muffin through empty halls, avoiding anyone but the servants who only nod at her with silent deference. Sometimes she doesn’t see Alistair for a week at a time, and then he appears in her doorway, and it’s always the same: “ _Eamon says… but I…_ ” They’re careful not to touch each other. Alistair usually stands at her window staring out, only glancing at her occasionally. She comes to understand that she is his moral compass, his standard by which he judges whether he’s foolish to disagree with Eamon or not. Finally, one day, instead of talking him through why something is right or not, she just looks at him. “What do you think?”

“…I don’t know what I think. If I knew I wouldn’t have to ask you.”

“Alistair… you’re not asking me what I think. You’re asking me to tell you what to think. That’s not… I can’t tell you that. You’re allowed to have your own opinions, you know. Even if they aren’t always right—you’re _allowed_ to be wrong sometimes, Alistair.”

His shoulders straighten as he looks down at her, and she can see it so clearly, the regal thing inside of him, how easy this could be for him if he would just trust himself. “No. I’m really not.”

“You are," she replies with perfect calm.

“I’m not—You’re—This is what _you_ wanted Solona. I’m just trying to make you happy!”

She waits until his eyes quit angrily dancing around the room and meet hers to respond. “Then have a little faith in yourself. That would make me happy. Make your own decisions, and fight for them. And when you’re wrong apologize. And then forgive yourself and make another decision. That will make me happy.”

He stares at her hopelessly. “Yes, well. I’ll just work on that, then. “ He leaves without another word.

The next day, she finds Teagan in the gardens. When she calls his name, he gives her that wide smile of genuine pleasure that he always reserves for her. “My lady? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

When _he_ calls her, “my lady,” there is still something sweet in it, something almost nostalgic now, and she cannot help returning his smile though she thinks it’s been days since her face arranged itself like this. The expression doesn’t last long.

“It’s about… Alistair.”

His expression is slower to change than hers, pulling into a slight frown only after he has considered her a long moment. “For all that you have both gone through, he is young. He _is_ learning. Don’t judge him too harshly.”

Even though he has misunderstood entirely, she’s so grateful for it, for the way he defends Alistair, that she laughs. “No—I know that. _That’s_ what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m…” She considers her words, opting for the polite lie, not wanting to offend Teagan. “I’m sure your brother is doing his best, but I am… concerned that he’s too busy teaching him _what_ decisions to make to teach him _how_ to make them. I don’t think… I don’t think he really _understands_ Alistair.” She hopes she isn’t wrong about Teagan. She thinks that once, some time ago now maybe, he was a boy who was soft and funny in a world that demanded he be serious and certain. He will understand, she hopes, how to help Alistair make himself harder and sharper without it breaking him. “…Will you promise me that you’ll look out for him? Just… help him. With the things that Eamon… doesn’t understand. Please?”

He meets her gaze with steady sympathy and warmth. “I will, my lady.”

 

 

She likes to think that maybe Teagan does help. A handful of times after her conversation with him, Alistair seems almost normal when he speaks to her—slower to crack a joke or even a smile, but he doesn’t look so crushed under the weight of his burdens. Maybe just half buried instead of crushed.

Of all her strange days in the Palace, the strangest is the day in the middle of Bloomingtide when she opens the door to leave her chambers in the morning to find Alistair sitting in her hallway, peering into a gilded cage where a raven stares back at him, surrounded by an array of golden boxes. He grins sheepishly at her as he rises. “Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you, but I wanted to talk to you before you were distracted by anything.” He glances around him, and his smile brightens into something eager and pleased and hopeful. “Happy name day.”

She is utterly perplexed. “Did you… did you just make up a name day for me because I don’t have one?”

“ _That_ is not what I did.” His smile stays just as bright as he shrugs. “I _may_ have sent for all your records from the Kinloch Hold though. And then for any records pertaining to you from Kirkwall after that.”

She just shakes her head, brows raised, eyes round. “I don’t understand.”

“I found out your name day. Your _real_ name day. And I got you a gift for everyone of them you’ve missed.”

She understands then what the gold boxes all over the hall are. “Oh, Alistair. You didn’t have to—you shouldn’t have.” She is normally careful not to call him by his name anymore now, but it slips out as something sweet and more painful for the sweetness swells up inside of her.

“Nonsense. What’s the point of being the King of Ferelden if I can’t buy the Hero of Ferelden eighteen gifts that she ought to have been given anyway and never was. Anyway, come _on_.” He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet eagerly, a display of enthusiasm she hasn’t seen from him since—well, since she turned him into someone who isn’t allowed to be eager as a child. He gestures toward the birdcage. “That one’s a raven. It’s trained to fly to the Palace. In case you need me—when you leave, I mean. Not that you _need_ anything, because you are amazing and indestructible and all of that, but just in case. Here, open this one.” He grabs a box and holds it out to her.

She takes it slowly, turning it over in her hands with a look of wonder on her face, fingers trailing over the gleaming gold paper, thin as tissue, that it’s wrapped in—real gold, she suspects. She can’t help laughing when she realizes that it’s already the one of the _prettiest_ things anyone has ever given her, and she hasn’t even opened it yet. When she pulls the gold tissue away, the small box beneath it is stunning, dark wood engraved with a swirling pattern. When she looks closer, she sees that the pattern is roses, and for a moment it’s too much, and she wants to shove the box back at him, flee into her room, and demand he take it all away through the closed door. But he’s so _happy_. It’s been so long since she’s seen him so blissfully, uncomplicatedly _happy_. And he _can_ afford this because he _is_ King, and how many things about being King are ever going to make him _happy_? So she takes a deep breath and smiles down at the box, fingers tracing over the roses, thinking of another rose. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”

“What? No, that’s—that’s just the box. The _present_ is inside the box.” The rate of his bouncing increases.

She lifts the lid. A delicate sliver bracelet set with a large sky blue gem rests inside.

“It’s a focusing crystal,” he explains immediately. “In case you end up somewhere without any weapons—so you can cast faster and better. And you can even wear it to fancy Orlesian balls. The Empress will probably invite you, you know. Not that you should go. You shouldn’t. Orlesians are sneaky. But anyway, the crystal. Just in case.”

If the thought had passed through her mind that he had simply sent out some courtier with instructions to buy an assortment of items a king might give a lady, she quickly sees that this is most certainly not the case. Every single gift is thoughtful, meant to help her or to remind her or to give back some piece of her long since lost.

He gives her a lyre, even though she doesn’t know how to play, hasn’t had a chance to learn since that day so long ago when she sat with Duncan and listened for the first time to a kind of magic that isn’t kept cloistered in the Circle, because he knows she finds the sound of it achingly beautiful.

When she unwraps a ring with a large round surface of obsidian set with lines of red in a pattern she isn’t familiar with, he looks most particularly pleased with himself. “The Amell coat of arms.”

He gives her all the information he collected on her—the names of her family members, her history that she had’t known—wrapped up in gold just like all the others, because he understands that this too is a gift.

He gives her a hair pin bearing the double griffin symbol of the Wardens, a book of Avvar poetry about the Lady of the Skies (“Because they’re the only ones I know of who love the sky as much as you do,”), a book about constellations, and a glass globe filled with water and a forest of tiny trees and the finest little flecks of some kind of clear crystal that catch the light as they fall when shaken like shooting stars. (The globe makes her think of the Becellian forest, of a waterfall, of—too many things, and she has to put it aside quickly.)

He gives her an official looking piece of parchment with the Theirin seal and his signature, declaring her free of the Circle because, “I don’t want you to think you have to stay with the Wardens because someone is going to throw you back into the Circle if you don’t. You don’t _have_ to stay with the Wardens. You don’t _have_ to do anything anymore. You can do whatever you want now, Solona. You deserve that.”

That’s the one that breaks the polite pleasure with which she’s received all the other gifts. Even though they haven’t touched each other, not once, not since the morning after the archdemon was slain, when he’d pressed tears into her skin the same way he’d once pressed his lips, now she throws her arms around his neck so hard she’s probably choking him. He just lets her, hands settling on her waist as though this is still the normal occurrence it once was, face shifting to bury itself in her hair.

When she pulls away, his hands resist for an instant before falling away. Avoiding his eyes, she scrubs one hand across her cheeks, _not that she is crying, because Warden Commanders do not cry. Ever._ “I _do_ want to stay with the Wardens. But… I can’t tell you how much that means to me, Alistair.”

“You don’t have to. I know,” is his quiet response.

All she can feel is wonder when she thinks that this man, whose freedom she took away with her stubborn determination to see the world made better, has given her the only freedom she’s ever known.

Following that is a similar parchment declaring a full pardon and the same freedom for the wanted apostate Jowan.

When she unwraps the enormous tapestry depicting herself slaying Urthemiel, she raises an eyebrow at him, unable to keep a bemused smile from tugging at her lips. All of his other gifts have been varying degrees breath-stealingly perfect—but what possessed him to think she would want a giant tapestry of _herself_ is quite beyond her.

“No, it’s just… I guess some of Howe’s things are probably still around Vigil’s Keep, but… without anything on the walls, one stone hold can feel a lot like another… I didn’t want you to ever have to feel like you were back in Kinloch again. And, you know, what better way to remind yourself that you aren’t there than with a representation of your own fearsome glory?…”

When she unwraps the little wooden figurine of a Knight Enchanter with red hair, she can only stare at it quietly. After carrying it with her through the better part of the Blight, she had stuffed it into Alistair’s pack when he wasn’t looking after they’d made camp one night on the road from Denerim to Redcliffe. Because it was his, really, never hers, and the theft had suddenly seemed wrong.

“She wants to stay with you. She says you smell nicer. She told me she likes you better than me.”

She closes her fist tightly around the wood. “…Thank you. I shouldn’t have taken her, but… thank you.”

“You never took anything from me that I didn’t want you to have, Solona.” His voice is so earnest that it makes her heart ache.

She forces herself to smile at him. “That’s not true, actually. You know your favorite pair of socks? The really grotesque, moldy ones with the holes? I tied them to a rock and threw them in Lake Calenhad. I thought you should know.”

He laughs, and when his hand reaches for her waist again, her breath catches, heart rate triples, but he’s just turning her, gently pushing her towards the window. He points at a pretty white and brown horse being walked back and forth on the lawn below. “That’s one of your presents too. I wanted to bring her up, but I was told that the answer to that request was an unequivocal _no_. She's an Anderfel Courser. They were originally bred specifically for the Grey Wardens. I thought it only appropriate that the Warden Commander have a mount befitting her station.”

When they turn back to the cluster of presents still left, he thrusts one at her awkwardly. “Here. Do—do this one next.” Is he… blushing?

She looks at the pile of discarded gold tissue and the presents left still wrapped, all identical but for size, in confusion. “Wait—do you actually know which box is which present?”

He shrugs, cheeks decidedly pink now. “I wrapped them myself.”

When she pulls out the pendant with two mabaris facing each other on it, she knows exactly what it is. Alistair’s hastily muttered, “I thought it would remind you of Muffin,” does nothing to confuse the knowledge of what it means. When she fastens the chain around her neck, Alistair looks both surprised and guilty. She wants to tell him he needn’t feel guilty, because he hasn’t fooled her, but it leaves open too many other things that she knows neither of them are able to say, so she just tucks the pendant bearing the Theirin coat of arms under her dress, against her heart, and they both pretend it isn’t what it is.

The next package he holds out is the largest—well, not counting the horse. When she pulls the tissue away to reveal a familiar woman with elegant features, a narrow, pointed chin, and brilliantly red hair, her breath leaves her in a rush.

“That’s—is that—“ She looks up Alistair, heart in her throat, and he just nods. “That’s my mother, “ she whispers.

It’s a long time before she’s ready to take the next package. Inside it are four slips of paper, each bearing a name she’s only just learned and the location of a Circle.

“I don’t know if you _want_ to look for them—I mean, it didn’t go so well for me—but I found out where they were. Your brothers and sisters. If you want to meet them—if you _want_ me to, I’ll go with you. After all, you came with me.”

She does not know what to say. That she even _has_ brothers and sisters… That _all_ of them are mages, shut away separately, without any knowledge of each other… She will have to think on this. For now, she puts the papers aside and smiles expectantly. There is only one box left, one of the smallest. Another piece of jewelry, maybe. He twists it in his own hands slowly, not yet holding it out to her. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get this one in time. You wouldn’t believe how hard getting it was. I _may_ have threatened to have someone executed…” Finally, he holds it out, his smile soft and warm and adoring. Every time he looks at her like this now, it feels like being punched right in the chest: she can’t breath and her heart doesn’t work right.

When the thing, small as it is, falls from her hands as they shiver in shock, she expects it to shatter, to leave a tiny spatter of her blood across the stone floor.

Instead, her phylactery rolls to a stop, whole, at Alistair’s feet.

He looks uncertain as he retrieves it and straightens. “I… was this wrong? Should I not have?”

The sight of it there on his palm, held out to her, makes her heart pound. Without thinking about what she’s doing, she reaches out and closes his fingers around it until it’s hidden in his fist. Once it’s no longer visible, she’s able to draw in a shuddering breath.

“Do you… want me to destroy it?” He looks helpless, confused, upset that he has upset her.

For some reason the idea of it destroyed makes her shudder harder. It makes her think of Jowan’s phylactery breaking, of his blood on another stone floor, how that action ended the world for her and dropped her into a new one. She doesn’t think that if she finds herself falling into a new world now she could possibly have the excruciating luck of surviving it again. “No.” Her voice is little more than a whisper.

When, confused, he tries to hold it out to her again, she curls his fingers around it even more tightly and pushes his fist to his chest, away from her. “I can’t. I don’t want it. Can you just… keep it for me?”

He starts to shake his head. “I shouldn’t— _no one_ should—“ And then he looks at her. “Yeah… If that’s what you want. Whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want me to.” And then after a moment of thought, “It’s still yours though. I’m just holding onto it for you. When you want it, you only have to say. It’s yours.”

 

 

She will leave for Amaranthine right in time for the autumn rains to make her trip wet and miserable. The date is finally set; she will depart on the first day of Kingsway.

She is excited, she tells herself.

She is eager for her new life to begin.

She is not terrified of leaving behind Alistair, the one constant in her life outside the Circle. Seeing him hurts. Being in his Palace and _not_ seeing him hurts. It will be a relief.

It’s a lie. The idea of being so far away from him… it makes her heart feel too big for her chest or too small for all the blood trying to squeeze through or… it hurts.

Everyday is a little more tense that the last, like music building up and up, and she doesn’t know what she’s waiting for, but all that does happen is a slow passage of days. On this, her last day at the Palace, the sun is out in full force; she is surprised the rains haven’t set in yet. She calls for Muffin, and the two of them wander the gardens. Eventually, they make their way to the enormous fountain at the center, a circle of pale marble amidst the manicured green. She’s sitting at the edge, fingers trailing in the water, when everything is just too much. Sometimes she forgets she isn’t invisible in this Palace, but she does have the good sense to make sure none of the gardeners are around before, in an act of defiance against the thunderous thing building up inside her, she kicks off her shoes, hikes up the skirt of her dress, and climbs over the knee high ledge. She hasn’t worn her Warden armor in weeks. The dresses were Leliana’s idea before she’d left—“Orlesian silk—you really will look a dream. But looking lovely is only _part_ of the luxury of Orlesian silk. Truly, it _feels_ a dream. Oh, come, just _try it on_.”

It _had_ felt like luxury, but that isn’t at all what Solona loved about it. …It reminded her of her mother.

Now, Orlesian silk bunched in her fists, she just stands in the fountain ridiculously for a moment, Muffin staring at her with his head tipped to the side.

“Well, come on already! We’re having _fun_ , damn it!”

That’s all the encouragement Muffin requires. With a gleeful yip and few scrambled steps back, he charges forward and leaps, splashing her mightily as he lands.

At first, pretending that she’s having fun is such a depressing thing that she almost sits down in the fountain and just lets herself cry for once. Before she’s able, Muffin leaps at her, knocking her onto her off her feet entirely, and licking madly at her face. She surprises herself by beginning to laugh. A real laugh. And then she’s up, dancing through the fountain, splashing at Muffin as he jumps around her, each landing sending up a spray of his own. His little nub tail is wagging hard enough to dislocate a hip. His every movement seems to say, **_There_** _you are! I’ve missed you_!

“Maker’s breath! Where are my sculptors? I need this moment carved in stone, to be memorialized for all time!”

She freezes, then slowly turns to Alistair, who’s doubled over with laughter. She might think her humiliation worth it to bring a laugh like this from him, the likes of which she hasn’t heard in months, but she’s too, well, _humiliated_ to appreciate the fact at the moment.

“No, no, Maker; don’t stop on my account.”

He’s still laughing. Andraste’s agony, but she has _missed_ that sound. And so, pulling her sodden dress through the water after her and giving him a glare that’s more like a smile, she approaches, dragging her hand across the surface so that a wave rises up, spattering him from head to waist.

The laughter breaks off with a high pitched, girlish noise, and he stares at her with wide eyed mirth. “Did you just _splash_ the King of Ferelden? Of all the indignities! You do realize that there’s really only one way for me to regain my manly honor, don’t you?”

She knows him too well though, knows the exact moment he’s going to move, and uses a force spell to heave water in his face as he hurtles the ledge. She darts away, as best she can, anyway, with what feel like fifteen pounds of wet skirt swirling around her. When he chases, in the confusion of tangled fabric and flying water, they both go down. He ends up sitting as she kneels over him, hands beating the water. “Ha! You’re no match for me and my tricksy skirts! Surrender while you can still breath!”

Laughing and sputtering out the water she’s splashing at him too hard to respond, when he grabs her and presses his face into her neck, she thinks it’s just to escape the deluge of water. And then she feels his lips pressing and parting, his tongue sliding against her skin, and everything in her just stops. Thought, breath, motion.

He pulls away and gasps, his whole body shuddering with it. He studies her silently, and she can see him trying to guess if what he’s done is wrong or not, but her mouth won’t work, won’t even breathe yet. His hands come up to cup her cheeks, but he doesn’t pull her forward. Instead, he leans in himself, inch by inch, until their noses touch. Still, he doesn’t kiss her. “What are you thinking, Lona?”

Finally she breathes, a greedy, tremulous sound almost like a sob. As she closes the last inch between them, she whispers, “I’m not.”

 

 

She follows him through the halls as though through a dream, terrified that they will run into Eamon and she will have to wake up. The moment his door to quarters closes behind her, he’s pulling her to him, tugging the cold, wet dress over her head, and then lifting her, hands hot on the backs of her thighs. It isn’t until he’s curled against her back in his bed, her breath slowing down sleepily, that he speaks. Between kisses along the shell of her ear, he whispers, “Don’t go.”

Skin sliding against his, she rolls over to level a look as pleading as his own at him. “Alistair. You _know_ this is goodbye. It’s only going to hurt worse if you pretend it’s not.”

“The _only_ thing I _know_ , Solona, is that I don’t want you to go. Stay with me.”

Her fingers trace the double griffon inked under the skin over his heart, and her lips follow her fingers. “I’ll always be with you.” She turns her head to rest her cheek against him. “Right here.”

He makes a disgruntled face. “You know what you sound like? Actually, _is_ that you, Wynne? Funny, you _said_ you’d look like my grandmother when I woke up beside you, but—“

She pulls the pillow from under his head and smacks him with it.

“What? I was only going to say that you’re far more beautiful than anything I deserve…” She can see in the gleam in his eyes that he isn’t done teasing her. “…Wynne.” The fight that begins with pillows and tickling fingers ends when she bites him on the chest and it suddenly isn’t a fight at all anymore.

Between the kissing and the touching, he keeps trying to convince her. When at one point he whispers, “Marry me,” all she can do is kiss him with everything that’s left of her. She puts all of herself into that kiss because she can’t say no and she can’t say yes and this is all that’s left for them, this, now.

When she wakes in the morning, she uses her magic to ensure he won’t for a while, because now that it’s come to it, she doesn’t think she can survive another one of his pleas.

At his desk, she scribbles on a piece of paper, more list of names that note, but he isn’t stupid and she knows he’ll understand it well enough.

With a deep breath that isn’t nearly enough, she leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I'm just going to be completely honest here: there is a happy ending coming for these two. It's like ten years in the making (I mean, you know, Dragon Age years, not like I expect you to wait ten actual years). After deliberating all day I've decided to make it a (much shorter--I don't know how long yet, but much shorter than this) sequel rather than making this fic even longer than it already is, largely because I just feel like it is sort of self-contained right now as is, but if you will bear with me, I will give you the happy ending.


End file.
